Does Your Mother Know

Head Over Heels

Robin

Robin's not quite as clueless as her son seems to think she is. Sure, she might not know everything that goes on in her children's lives, but it's not hard to pick up on most of it.

Smell was usually a dead giveaway, for example. No amount of air freshener or gum had covered the smoky scent that lingered on Sebastian's clothes, or his breath when he'd first started smoking cigarettes. Similarly, he'd failed the mask the skunky smell of the ash tray he kept in his room, and it hadn't been very hard for Robin to figure out what that was – her husband was a biologist, after all.

It was difficult to detect a strong scent after being surrounded by it for so long, and so Robin wonders if Sebastian's even noticed that lately, he's started to smell a little like Sam's favourite cologne.

"Did you borrow that shirt from Sam?" she asks him one night, as he joins her on the couch with his laptop. Sebastian didn't normally work outside of his bedroom, but she'd asked him for help putting together an anniversary surprise for Demetrius.

Sebastian frowns, glancing down at it. "Uh, no? It's one he bought me for my birthday, though."

"Oh, that must be it," she replies, and Sebastian raises an eyebrow. "I thought it smelled a little like his cologne," Robin explains.

"Yeah, maybe," he mumbles, as he zips his hoodie up over the shirt. "Anyways, I finished scanning in all those pictures you gave me," he opens up his laptop, and passes it to her, "and they're all saved on this USB drive here." He plugs the stick into the side of the laptop, and a window opens on the screen. "So now you can print more copies of them, or make slideshow, or whatever you want to do with them."

"How do I see the pictures? Do I click on this?" Robin asks, frowning at pop up on the screen.

"Yeah, just click the 'OK' button. Don't touch anything else." She selects the option, and a window opens to display several folders. "I sorted them all into folders," Sebastian explains, "so this one has your wedding pictures, and this one is Maru's baby pictures and stuff, and then this one is mine..."

With Sebastian's help, Robin navigates into the folder with his childhood photos, and starts clicking through the photos. "Oh Sebby, look at this one!" she exclaims, upon opening a picture of him at eight years old, proudly holding out a frog in a bucket. She looks away from the screen to smile at him. "I miss your red hair. And your freckles!"

Sebastian doesn't look like he misses having red hair, or freckles. "That was a really long time ago," he replies.

"I know," Robin sighs. She resumes scrolling through the pictures, pausing once again when she reaches a picture of Sebastian – now ten years old – on the playground with Sam. "Oh, and this one! Do you remember your first playdate with Sam? You were so shy!"

"I'm pretty sure you were more excited about that playdate than I was," Sebastian says.

"Oh, I don't know," Robin teases, "it took you a little bit to warm up to the idea, but I distinctly remember that you started crying when I told you it was time to go home."

He blushes. "I was like, ten, Mom. How do you even remember that?"

Robin smiles to herself as she clicks through a couple more pictures. She stops again at one of Sebastian, Sam, and Abigail seated around a game of Solarian Chronicles, and Sebastian groans.

"Yoba, we look ridiculous," he complains. "Abigail's got raccoon eyeliner, and half my forehead is stained black from that awful Joja hair dye."

"Of course you do, everyone looks ridiculous when they're that age," Robin says with a laugh. "Oh, and look at Sam's hair... this must have been taken after he tried to cut it himself."