Mint and apricots

17. Don't you dare

Though he was the first to be surprised by that, after a couple of seconds Sam found himself nodding. The situation was stalled – Dean more than anyone else in there looked frozen because of a terror he was unable to express and that his brother could not understand –, so there was really nothing else he could do. On the other hand, despite being defensive, he felt powerful. He was too angry to fear losing a battle which, after all, depended on him.

So he grabbed a chair, pulled it away from the table and sat on it angrily, crossing his arms. His mother pretended not to notice his protective wall and approached the matter with delicate firmness, as when his youngest son was a teenager and John Winchester's military methods did nothing but exacerbate his hostility.

"Can you tell me anything about this Luc?"

"He's my boyfriend," Sam said, sticking to the essential. "We love each other."

"Is that all?" Mary lightly pushed him, raising an eyebrow.

Sam opened his mouth without hesitation and did not spare her all of his poison. He really felt like he was fifteen again and finding himself negotiating the terms of his freedom with his parents, with the only difference that this time his father would not have lectured him for half an hour before sending him to bed without dinner and without giving him the slightest opportunity to assert his point.

"Dean has already shown me he can't understand anything else about us, so I don't see how you could. You two are on the same page, at least as far as this story is concerned. And he has already tried to make me say that Luc is a bad person. Well, he isn't. We had a disagreement, we'll make up. Get it through your head."

At that point Dean, overwhelmed as he was, collapsed to sit on the sofa, half a meter away from his mother, shaking his head. With his face buried in his hands, he repeated the word "disagreement" in an incredulous voice. Mary paid no attention to him and kept focused, forcing Sam to do the same.

"I can't understand, huh?" she repeated with a grimace.

Not knowing where she was going with that, Sam no longer had the answer so ready.

"I don't think so, no. Not after Dean warned you," he said, more circumspect.

"He did, Sam. And I'll be honest with you, I'm scared. But I want to understand. I need to," Mary explained, putting her hands together on her lap before leaning a little further towards the point her son had chosen as a temporary refuge. "Do you and Luc have a disciplinary relationship?"

Sam felt something break inside him and Dean happened to feel exactly the same. Perhaps what fell apart was the belief that their mother was such a naive woman. The silence that followed, on the contrary, was made of shiny, slippery and cold metal, and Sam made an enormous effort to tackle it.

"What?" he whispered, bewildered.

Mary didn't even blink and just clarified the question.

"Dean quoted your textual words for me. He said, because you said, that Luc hit you because, if you screw up, he takes measures. And that you agree, that you want him to do it," she reported, opposing her own tranquility to the growing discomfort that was making its way on both her children's faces. "So answer me, please: do you and Luc have a disciplinary relationship?"

For a moment, when he met Dean's wide-eyed eyes, Sam was a child again and his brother a partner in some prank to be kept hidden from their parents. But it took him little to remember the reason for the indignation that continued to sting his stomach, even though it was now the sense of surprise that came out more. It took him little to remember he was alone on that side of the barricade.