Archive of Our Own

Dean is watching Sam hold the tent's-worth of fabric over his shoulders with a grin on his face. "It was the only size they had, Sammy." He nudges his booted foot against Sam's bare ankle where they sit next to each other on the scratchy polyester motel duvet. "The way you're always goin' on about girl crap, I thought maybe you'd appreciate a nice dress."

Sam rolls his eyes and shoves hard against Dean's shoulder. Then he slips the shirt over his head—cheap plastic tag still dangling from one armpit—and when his face pokes out of the collar, he's practically swimming in it; the long sleeves of his thermal are rolled up around his elbows, and Dean can barely see them anymore. Even if his little brother grows another two feet and puts on a hundred more pounds before he's done with this growth spurt, he'll still be too scrawny to fill out this particular cotton-poly-blend monstrosity. "Looks good on you," Dean says anyway, and he means it. He reaches out and tucks an errant curl behind Sam's ear.

Sam's cheeks go pink and he ducks his head, swaying into Dean's shoulder affectionately. "You know I hate this, right?" He looks back up at Dean and his eyes are narrowed, fox-like. He's got his bottom lip sucked right up between his front teeth.

Dean grins. "Yeah, Sammy," he says, "and that's exactly why you love it."

Sam rolls his eyes again and doesn't answer, but Dean knows he's right.

Then Sam is suddenly twisting away and reaching for the drawer of the bedside table. He comes back with a thick paper envelope clutched between his fingers. He thrusts it at Dean's chest, pink all the way up to his ears now. "Here," he says to the bedspread. "Merry Christmas."

Dean raises an eyebrow, opening the envelope curiously, and a splay of glossy photos spills out into his palm. He holds them up in the bright shaft of morning light that pierces through the dimness of their chilly room; it's hot in Mississippi, but he cranked the AC low as it'd go as soon as he got up just to pretend they were somewhere white, somewhere with trees covered in sparkling lights and garlands of tinsel. He shivers now, but it's not from the cold. "What—?" he asks, eyes glued to the images in front of him.

Sam is stiff by his side, fingers fidgeting in his lap, tangling in the cotton of the stupid trucker shirt. "You remember I got invited to that birthday party in Tulsa?" he asks, voice soft. "They gave out disposable cameras as party favors, and I just ... didn't think there was much else worth taking pictures of."

In every picture, Dean sees himself: sitting in a booth at a diner; behind the wheel of the Impala; cleaning his guns at some long-forgotten motel table; and in each of them, he's blurry – a little out of focus in the distance. It's Sam's hand in the foreground that's sharp and clear, reaching in from out-of-frame and holding a note on a scrap of paper that becomes progressively more crumpled and folded in each subsequent image. In Sam's slanting, precise handwriting, it reads, "I don't know how to say it, but I love you."

Dean realizes that he's holding his breath as he watches months and months of their lives unfold before him in dozens of stolen moments. Sam stands in the mirror of a tiny bathroom with the door flung wide open; he's holding the note, and Dean sees himself sleeping on the double bed visible in the reflection. Here, the words are barely legible behind the blaze of a burning grave, Dean silhouetted against its heat in the dark of the cemetery. In this one, he's smiling wide and devious at the girl behind the counter at a gas station, visible through the window from Sam's place in the backseat of the car. The note covers the girl's face, and Dean has no idea what she looked like – who she was.

He'd never noticed Sam with a camera – not once. Dean swallows and forces himself to blink. He slides the last picture out from all the rest, and his heart stutters in his chest.

This one is different. Framed in the warm orange light of early morning, the photo is still of him—up close this time—face soft and placid in sleep as he lies on his side against tangled white sheets. The note is unfolded on the pillow an inch or two in front of his face, and just on the other side is Sam. His eyes are wide open, and he's staring at Dean with an unreadable expression on his face; he looks young, and lonely, and afraid. There's barely six inches of space between their bodies, and Dean can almost imagine the warmth of Sam's breath over his skin. I don't know how to say it, but I love you. He takes a deep, shaking breath.

"I took that one yesterday," Sam whispers, and then he's reaching into the pocket of his sweats under the ridiculous folds of his new shirt, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. Dean's eyes finally leave the photos and flick to Sam, who can't seem to look at him. "You can have this, too, if you want it," Sam says. His hand is steady as it hovers in the air between their bodies.

They stay suspended like that for what feels like hours. Dean is shaking, afraid to move. The pictures gleam in his peripheral vision where they're balanced on his lap.

He reaches out so slowly he's not even sure he's moving at first. His hand comes up, drags through the air until his fingers settle over the note. "I do want it," he says at last, and Sam's breath hitches.

Their eyes meet, and Sam's gaze is wild and defiant and hopeful. "Really?" he asks – like he thinks Dean is playing a joke on him.

Dean nods, just once. "Yeah, Sammy," he says. "Really." He leans in, keeps hold of the paper between their trembling hands, and closes the distance.

There won't be a photo of this moment, he thinks as he kisses his brother, tender and desperate and breathless, but it doesn't matter. He couldn't possibly ever forget.