Mint and apricots

28. Discipline

- May 18th, 1996 -

It was dinner time at the Winchester household. But while the spouses John and Mary Winchester were helping themselves with some more salad and their eldest son, Dean, was already attacking his third beer escalope with his knife and fork, the youngest of the family, thirteen years old of age – the last of which he had spent growing like a bonsai that turns out to be sequoia – had only swallowed a handful of baked potatoes and was playing with the rest of the content of his plate.

With his left elbow resting on the table and his head on his hand, he hadn't said a word since his father had come home an hour earlier and seemed to have every intention of continuing on that self-defeating path. Dean, who was certainly aware of his little brother's bad mood, was pretty sure that before the end of the day Sam would have received the consideration he was asking for with that timeless reverse psychology which typical of the worst peaks of adolescence. If that interest in him would have come in the form of a loud lecture from Dad, Sam would have had little to complain about, given the attitude he was sporting at the table.

"Sam, could you pass me the salt?" John Winchester asked out of nowhere. Only after a few seconds had passed without his youngest son's arm or the salt shaker moving, the man looked up from the salad leaves he was mixing. "Sam. The salt, please."

Still nothing. Sam kept his eyes fixed on his plate, continuing to turn over the rosemary and the now cold potato wedges. Before his father could insist a second time – and bring the situation to the brink of a sure argument, one that lately was all too easy to blow up with Sam –, Dean reached over his younger brother's pout, grabbed the salt shaker and passed it to his right, where John sat at the head of the table.

"He's angry because you didn't go to his game," the seventeen-year-old explained in response to his father's questioning look.

Sam stiffened and gave his brother a murderous look, but neither Dean nor his father gave any sign of noticing.

"His game?" John repeated, slightly wrinkling his forehead as he added a pinch of salt to the lettuce he had on his plate.

"Yesterday, Dad. There was his soccer match," Dean specified, with all the patience that his younger brother seemed to have run out of for some time, at least towards his parent.

"Oh, yeah," the man remembered with a nod of his head. He took the time to bring a piece of meat and some green leaves to his mouth, chew and swallow them before going on, waving the hand holding the fork in his eldest son's direction. "But yesterday there was also your wrestling match. It would have been impossible to come to both of them."

At that moment Sam decided he had had enough. Or rather, he just couldn't hold his tongue anymore. He hated the haughty, superior and superficial behavior with which his father accepted every criticism, when on the other hand he demanded absolute and immediate obedience every time he barked an order. Sam had not yet memorized the Constitution – not all of it, at least – but that way of acting was enough to make his whole being cry scandal. Fed up with being on the sidelines, he stabbed a potato wedge with so much energy that his fork's teeth gritted against the ceramic plate.