awomanongont:

(from Batman and Robin v1 #20)

Batkids and ties headcanon:

Dick was about fourteen or fifteen when he really started picking up on/unconsciously imitating Bruce’s habits of emotional repression and internalisation; one of the consequences of that was that physical contact between them, and between Dick and Alfred, faded out almost entirely. Dick just sort of… stopped the hugs. (I picture him as having tended to HUG EVERYONE before his parents died, and then that stopped for a time while he grieved them but he’d still hug Bruce and Alfred, especially after learning about Batman/becoming Robin.)

But despite this thirteen years later Dick will happily pretend he can’t tie any kind of knot in any kind of tie so Bruce or Alfred have to do it for him. It’s a hug-substitute and they all know it. In fact it’s so much of a habit with Dick that he does it with Tim and even Damian, who climbs on chairs and castigates him for his general incompetence while he knots. He doesn’t try it with Cass because she can see it coming a mile off (body language!) and thinks it’s ridiculous, if he wants a hug just hug. (Dick is one of the few people Cass spontaneously hugs, because she can tell how much he likes it.)

Tim’s Mom taught him to knot a tie when he was about eight. He thinks of her every time he wears one.

Jason can tie a Windsor more quickly and easily even than Alfred. He is not proud of this. At all. Never has been. Look, fuck off, OK, he doesn’t ask you what your least useful skills are.

Cass, on the rare occassion on which she attends society events, wears pantsuits and a bowtie. The bowties were Steph’s idea. She learnt to tie them by watching Alfred knot Dick’s.

Steph has never learnt to knot a tie and never will, but she’s the only one Dick will listen to when she says the tie he’s picked doesn’t match his suit.

Damian can knot his ties however which way you so desire with his eyes closed and one-handed, thank you very much. He gets to ignore the rules of fashion because he actually knows them, Grayson, which is more than can be said for your sartorial taste. He’s seen those photographs in Titans Tower.

((This is amazing, and is now head cannon.))