Mint and apricots

19. Hot chocolate

If the man had a dark expression on his face, the woman had a terrified look that mirrored that of the blond boy following her. That look on the woman's face only turned into relief once she knelt in front of the smallest boy standing there and held him close to her in a rush of pure despair, making sure that nothing had happened to him.

"Oh my God," she sighed, allowing herself a few more instants of hugging with her eyes closed before moving back and taking Sam's face in her hands. "Why did you take off like that? You scared me to death!"

Sam, still all focused on his new book, did not even perceive his mother's apprehension.

"Mom, look, isn't it nice?" he sang instead, showing her the volume.

At that point his father – who, Sam noticed, had his typical Monday morning face on – left Dean's side and joined his wife's to freeze his youngest son with a single icy glance.

"Put it back," he ordered dryly, nodding towards "White Fang".

Sam hugged it in an outraged move.

"But my friend gave it to me!"

There was something, in John Winchester, that made perfectly clear, even to a child, the precise moment when his patience reserves scraped the bottom of the barrel. It was probably all about the flash of light that seemed to pass behind his eyes. The flash that, at six years old, Sam already dared to ignore.

"You don't deserve it at all, given the way you are behaving today," his father decreed, snatching the volume from his hand and then turning to the street vendor and extending the book, deaf to Sam's immediate complaints.

"Don't scold him, please," the man asked him, offering a cordial look at Mr. Winchester's altered one. "With all these candy and toys around, he came straight to my book stand. Your son is a consolation for an old bookseller like me," he explained, with a grateful smile. "Let him keep the book, please. A child who appreciates reading is a small miracle nowadays."

Since the bookseller did not want to take the volume, John found himself forced to hand it back to his son to close the matter, sighing heavily.

"Take it," he ordered when Sam's reaction was to remain motionless on the spot, observing him from below with his face frowning with suspicion. "And thank this gentleman."

"Thank you," Sam murmured, returning to press the booklet to his chest before giving a sincere smile to the bookseller. "Then I will come back here and tell you how much I liked it."

The man with the thick white beard winked at him.

"I'm counting on it."

His father did not give him any more time to say goodbye or to enjoy the feeling of having received the best gift ever. Suddenly he took him by the arm, as he had done with Dean a few minutes earlier, and led him as far away from the crowd as possible, with Mary and their eldest son following immediately behind. They were on the edge of the square inside which the speakers kept playing Christmas classics when John finally stopped and put an end to Sam's whining by turning him over and giving him a single, resolute spanking.

The boy whimpered at the impact, but then fell silent, realizing that it was not convenient for him to push his luck. Both he and his brother were aware that, if only they had been at home and Dad had lost his temper as in that moment, Sam would have got a serious, well deserved and much longer spanking. However, the little boy could not do anything so that his eyes did not fill with tears. His father paid no attention to that and turned him back with a single firm movement of his arms, crouching and holding him still in front of him to force Sam to keep his eyes on him.