Work Text:
There is a photo that sits in a box in Dean Winchester’s attic. It is buried deep beneath memories; books, an old baseball glove, a square hat with a tassel that symbolizes change, growth, and loss. In it, a boy, on the cusp of becoming a man - if the light fuzz of hair that can be seen on his cheeks is any indication - stares at a teenaged Dean with love and adoration in his serious blue eyes, a smile playing at the corner of his lips while Dean laughs, openly and joyously at a joke that has now been lost to time. It is a candid photograph; a moment in time captured and frozen, forever.
The photograph has not been forgotten, but, like the boy with the blue eyes, has been put aside; out of sight, out of mind. A relic of the past that does not fit in with the world as it is today. Dean goes to work, comes home, makes dinner, goes out with friends, visits with family, mourns his father’s passing, celebrates his brother’s graduation, and still the photograph – and the boy – stay buried.
It is less painful than the alternative.
So the photograph in the box stays hidden, stays buried in the attic collecting dust. And Dean goes about his life knowing deep down that it is there. A little piece of himself buried deep, collecting dust. And the boy with the blue eyes visits his dreams every so often, just to remind Dean that he is still there, buried deep within the photograph and the memories. On the nights he dreams of blue eyes, it is hard to tell whether he will awake smiling or with tears burning at the backs of his eyes. Sometimes it is both. But then he gets out of bed and brushes his teeth, and the coffee that he takes black banishes the nighttime visitations back to where they live in the depths of his mind.
The boy with the blue eyes who stared at him laughing like Dean was everything. Like Dean was his whole world.
Dean remembers how it felt to be loved that much, to be someone’s whole world and for that person to be his. For a moment in time he had that. And the memory stays alive in his mind. Right at the back, in the shadows and the dust.
And the boy with the blue eyes stares at Dean laughing, frozen in a perfect moment of joy and happiness. Not knowing what would come next.