Work Text:
Christmas Night 1978
For years, Sansa had known she wanted to be a photographer someday, to take amazing photos like the ones she’d see in her magazines. Fashion, nature or wildlife, she was sure she was meant to do something like that.
So this year, she’d begged for her own camera, a Polaroid One Step, and she’d received it. One button, just aim and click and out came your picture. She was going to take so many pictures! Except she’d have to raid her piggy bank to buy more film. The camera had come with three 8-exposure packs of film but she’d had to test it out thoroughly, right?
Not all of them had turned out so great. Rickon and the dogs wouldn’t sit still long enough. Bran and Arya liked making faces at her too much. Some were too dark and one got touched while it was still developing. Mother and Daddy had cooperated at least and she had a nice one of them tacked up on her corkboard to display.
Jon and Lyanna had shown up for coffee and cake and final presents around nine. It was nearing midnight now and the adults were playing cards in the kitchen. Robb had disappeared to his room with Jon a while ago and the younger kids were in bed. Sansa was starting to yawn and thinking about slipping into her PJs and listening to her other gift on her record player, the soundtrack for Grease.
Jon had gone for his mandatory trip to his dad’s today as per the custody agreement which was why they’d been so late coming over. He’d been in a bad mood when they arrived. It sounded like he still was. Robb’s door was ajar and she could hear him fuming about something. It also smelled like marijuana in there. Robb rarely did it when Mother and Daddy were home but it was Christmas and maybe he thought he could get away with it. He was probably right.
“I’m not going next year,” she overheard Jon telling Robb. Alright, she’d stopped to eavesdrop a little.
“But I thought you had to go.”
“I’ll be eighteen next year and they can’t make me then. I’m not wasting another Christmas with him just because he likes pissing off Mom and then be ignored the whole time. Fuck him.”
Sansa gasped at Jon’s language and then covered her mouth, standing still as a statue and hoping neither boy had heard her.
“What do you want, Sansa?” Robb asked in annoyance as he poked his head out. (Of course, they’d heard her.)
Jon poked his head out too as she was trying to come up with an answer. She didn’t necessarily want anything. She’d just been curious. She didn’t want them to think she planned on snitching on them for smoking pot either. Scrambling, she blurted out something that sounded plausible.
“I wanted to take Jon’s picture before I go to bed! With my new camera.” It was still in her hands and she held it up.
Robb rolled his eyes but she saw Jon cracking a smile, the first one she’d seen from him today. She’d made him smile and that made up for the fact that she’d be using her next to last picture on him.
Robb held the door open wider and told her not to say anything. She knew what he meant. The ashtray was sitting on his windowsill with the window cracked. She nodded. She could be cool. She wasn’t a little kid.
“You really want to take a picture of his ugly mug?” her brother asked, teasingly.
“He’s better looking than you at least,” she snarked back before she’d thought those words through.
Robb laughed and now she was blushing…dammit. But Jon was blushing a bit, too.
And when she thought about it, she didn’t think they had a recent picture of Jon, not since he’d been ten or so. That’d been when he’d started going to his dad’s on Christmas and Christmas was one of the few times a year Catelyn Stark made a point to get her camera out for a photo or two. Her mother was always busy on holidays. It seemed a shame not to have a more recent picture of Jon.
“Where’d you want to take it?” Jon asked, his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked kind of self-conscious. It was kind of cute. He was kind of cute actually. She hadn’t really considered it before.
In an attempt to hide the fact she was still blushing, Sansa looked around her brother’s room and took more than three seconds to consider the lighting and background…like a real photographer might.
“Stand there and, Robb, you stand beside him. I’d like to get you together.”
Robb grumbled but both boys were grinning when they heard “Say cheese!” and she clicked the button. She thought it might be the best photo so far. It was definitely going up next to the one of Mother and Daddy on her corkboard.
“What about you?” Jon asked as Robb was trying to shoo her back out of his room.
“What about me?” she asked as Robb groaned.
“Have you had your picture taken today?”
“I…well, there’s only one left and I don’t know if…no one would…”
Jon reached for her camera, his warm hands brushing hers and making her blush all over again. “There should be at least one of you taken with your new camera. I just aim and click, right?”
“Ur-right,” she stammered as Jon held it up, grinning at her and making her tummy do the silliest little flips and flops.
Deciding he liked being photographed apparently, Robb wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze. “Smile, Sansa.”
She thought she looked more like a deer caught in headlights once the picture developed but Jon said she looked pretty in it. “Can I keep it?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah…sure.”
“Thanks.”
He was carefully placing the picture on top of his jacket as Robb kicked her out for good this time. She thought she might have floated to her room more than walked. She laid down in her bed that night, staring at the picture she’d taken of him, listening to her new album and daydreaming a little.