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“Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
“You have to stand up.”
“You’re sitting. I should be sitting.”
“If someone is going to attack me, they aren’t going to do it down at my level out of some sort of skewed sense of honour.” Barbara folded her arms across her chest and stared at him with a look that she hoped was at least a little threatening. “So, stand up.”
Her glare must have been at least somewhat effective because Dick popped to his feet, standing up straight and gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you really just ma’am me, Grayson? Honestly? Prepare to have your ass handed to you.” Barbara takes off her glasses and sweater and tosses them on the desk. “Bring it.”
He nods and disappeared into the darkness of the cave behind them, leaving her alone in the center of the training room.
During her time as Batgirl, Barbara had never really taken to weapons training the way that Dick or Jason had. She had learned the skills and felt comfortable with plenty of weapons in her hands, but hadn’t really found a style that she wanted to permanently adopt. She had found that her strengths had laid more in aikido, krav maga or other martial arts where she could use her opponents’ strength against them instead of brute force, keeping her hands free for holds and grabs. She could still use those defensive moves, but without the use of her legs she needed to find a way to attack back. Just because she wasn’t active in the field any longer didn’t mean she couldn’t be prepared to act if needed; if something were to happen when she was at home or just going about her daily life. Again.
Training with Richard Dragon was vastly different than her training with Bruce had been. Sort of reminded her of the Karate Kid with a wax on, wax off vibe with her learning the moves, but no actual sparring yet. Three weeks in and while she felt that she had made leaps and bounds she was getting a little antsy about not having a chance to test herself. Once Dick had heard that she was primarily practicing escrima, he wanted to see her in action and she jumped at the chance for some actual sparring, hence the afternoon in the cave while Bruce was out of town.
She waited for Dick’s first move, hands folded in her lap, trying to simulate being caught unaware. Trying to pretend that there wasn’t a vigilante lurking in the shadows about to sneak up and attack her. Surprisingly she heard him off to her left before she saw him, a scuff of a foot, and she moves her hands quickly to the armrests and snaps her sticks out of their hiding spots and grips them firm.
Dick rushes at her head on and she swings with a smooth double arc. He dodges out of the way, but she makes contact on his thigh when she reverses her left stick through its last path while spinning the right back into the neutral pose.
“Nice hit. Good balance of finesse and power.” He raises his arm to block a right swing, but she flips the stick, jabs the handle into his outer elbow and smiles when he grunts at her strike. “And the ma’am? Totally not an insult. It was the glasses. They make you look all sexy librarian.” He darts around her chair and drops down to speak directly beside her ear in a low tone. “Like if I dog ear a book or don’t whisper, I’d get in so much trouble.”
“You’re trying to distract me.” Barbara brings both arms above her head to try and hit him while he stands behind her, but her contact doesn’t hit her target, and he’s back in front of her in a blink, eyeing her like prey in their cat and mouse game.
“Yeah. Doesn’t mean I’m lying.”
She’s watching his feet trying to follow his hakbang, his footwork patterns, to figure out where he is going next but not surprisingly he’s being sporadic and not following anything specific that she’s learned so far. She may be using escrima techniques but he’s all over the place, mixing and matching his styles to try and throw her off. “Really? Librarian? Such a cliché, Hunk Wonder. What’s next? Cheerleader? I expected better from you.”
“Clichés are classics for a reason, Babs.”
In the end, Barbara didn't actually take him down, but she thinks that if they were using actual escrima sticks and not the training ones, she would have been able to force to drop him to his knees a couple times. There had been a nice jab to his ribs that had both winded him and left him with an impressed look, and she was happy to see that her seated position could actually be a bit of an advantage; even someone as skilled as Dick had a hard time landing blows to her torso and the lower center of gravity was more difficult to target than a typical standing foe, but she had to pay closer attention to head shots. With a little more experience and practice, she’d be able to defend herself a lot more than she had thought was going to be possible.
“You’re getting really good. I wasn’t expecting you to use a redonda strike when you got me in the ribs.” Dick says as he rubs his side and Barbara smiles. It was a nice hit and she knows he’s going to have a bruise from it.
“You were going easy on me.”
“Only a little.”
“An attacker won’t.”
“I wasn’t going to go all out, true, but I am slightly more experienced than the average thug.”
“We are regularly attacked by ninjas. You can’t hold back.”
Dick sighs and runs his hand through his hair. He’s use to her Type A personality requests, wanting to be the best at everything she does. “We’ll work our way up to ninjas, Babs. I was going at ‘above average mugger’ level. You’ll get there quick if Dragon is training you.”
“You didn’t even try to knock me out of my chair. I’m working on this awesome floor move where I take you down at the ankles and then give you a black eye before you even know you are on the ground.”
“I… can’t.” Barbara opened her mouth to protest, but Dick held his hand up with his eyes pleading with her to stop. He looked embarrassed, but didn’t look away. “I know I have to when we’re sparring so you can practice, and you can handle it but… not yet. I’m sorry if that sounds, I don’t know, condescending or ableist or something, but I’m not ready to do that to you. Yet. Please.” He flushed pink. “Give me a little more time to get my mind around it and then I’ll be able to do something like that. Promise.”
Barbara nodded, because she understood where he was coming from. Dick had been pretty great since her ‘accident’ (she hated calling it that because a Joker attack is never an accident, but it was the simplest word for it), not walking on eggshells and treating her the same as before, but he was overdoing it. He went out of his way not to shove what she couldn’t do in her face, even when it was painfully obvious. He was pushing so hard insisting that she could do anything that she used to do, maybe just a little differently, that he was having problems putting her into a vulnerable position on purpose. He still needed to accept that things had changed; she could accept that he needed more time on this.
She went over to the desk, grabbed their water bottles and her glasses and returned to where Dick was now sitting on the couch near the sparring mats. She handed him the bottles and glasses while transferred herself to sit beside him. It was still a little clumsy, but she was proud of how much better she was getting at it. When she was settled, Dick grinned and carefully placed her glasses on her nose, and then his hand moved to rest in her hair. She winked at him and he groaned in response.
There was a slightly tense silent moment between them and then Dick took a deep breath and started rambling. “It’s not just the glasses. I mean, they are sexy, but I think you’re beautiful all the time. And smart, strong and all round badass. I think about you all the time.” His eyes shift off hers and look at where his fingers are gently playing with her hair. “You know that I’m in love with you, right?” he asked softly.
Barbara had suspected that he had had a crush on her for a while. There hadn’t been a catalyst that she could remember but there seemed to be a shift in his words and movements around her; like a pulse that she hadn’t noticed before until it was right there in front of her.
It was a little exciting.
“Dick…”
Interrupting her, he rushed on. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m not expecting you to. I just needed you to know.” He looks back at her again, a little hesitant but with a determination that she finds herself drawn to. “If it’s out in the open, I’m going to be less stressed about whether I’m acting weird around you or not. Now at least you’ll know why I’m acting like a dork.”
“You’ve always been a dork.” She wishes that she could knock her knee against his, like the way she did when they younger and being chastised by Batman for being silly on patrol or when they were watching the sun come up from Brown’s Bridge. Pivot. She leans her shoulder into him a little bit instead and she immediately feels him reciprocate the pressure. It stirs up the butterflies and feels warm deep in her stomach.
“You know what I mean. I feel clumsy and shy about it, but I’ve decided I’m not going to try to hide it either. It is what it is and you deserve to know. We don’t keep secrets from each other.” Dick reached down slowly and tentatively took her hands in his, as if he was worried that she’d pull them away, but of course she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that. She squeezed his hands in return and he visibly relaxed, letting out a long breath and the tension flowed from his shoulders.
“I feel it too.” She whispered and a smile kept onto Dick’s face. Not his patented Robin grin, but a small lopsided one, one that was genuine and sweet and purely Dick Grayson. “This thing, between us. It’s not just you.” Barbara didn’t want to use the L word like he had, even though she knew that’s what she was feeling. That had been building for a long time. “I’m not ready. I’m doing better but this,” she leans forwards touches the rims of her chair beside the couch gently, “this has changed a lot things and I’m still figuring them out. Both about me and about life. I need a little more time.”
“I can give you that.”
“I’m not going to ask you to wait.”
“You could. I’d be good with it.”
“But I won’t. That isn’t fair to you. I don’t know how long it will for me to be ready, and I don’t want you to miss out on something great in the case that maybe I’ll never be ready.” The words made her nervous to say out loud, but he was right about not keeping secrets. She couldn’t keep this one from him or herself. The rational part of her brain told her that she’d be ready to date again someday, probably sooner than she thought, but a voice kept whispering in the head ‘but what if you’re not?’ and she couldn’t ignore that doubt completely.
“I think I might wait awhile anyway.”
“I can’t stop you, can I?”
“Not unless you know how to stop taking my breath away.” His eyes widened and he covered his mouth with his hand and Barbara tried to contain a giggle but was failing pretty badly. “Wow. That was awful. I’m so embarrassed for me.” Her giggles grew into full grown belly laughs and she hears Dick’s honest laughter joining hers.
“That’s one of the cheesiest things you’ve ever said. And I’ve heard you say things like ‘jumping jillickers’ un-ironically.” Dick’s eyes flick upwards for a second, almost as if he’s rolling them at his younger self. “But I think you’re right. Imagine how much worse that would’ve been if I didn’t know how you felt. You probably would have grappled off into the rafters.”
“Yeah. Would have dropped a smoke bomb first too. You know, for the aesthetic.”
“Such a drama queen.”
“It’s hard to not be overly dramatic when you grow up in a circus and then taken in by a guy who dresses up like a giant bat.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking from the bottles and listening to the sounds of the cave until Barbara nudged him again with her shoulder. “Thanks.” Dick raised an eyebrow. “For the workout. I needed that.” She locked her eyes on his. “And the other part too.”
“No problem. Thanks for not laughing at me and my moon eyes. Much.” Dick pulled out his phone and checked the time. “It’s still early. Want to go upstairs, watch a movie and see me get flustered when I sit too close?”
“Only if there’s popcorn so that our fingers might accidentally touch in the bowl and then we can both awkwardly pretend to ignore it.”
“Deal.”