The sun leeched through the faded motel curtains and turns the beige walls to fuzzy gold.
Through a narrow gap, a single shaft of sunlight catches on the edge of the bedside table and reflects on the figure in the bed.
Dean is asleep.
Shirtless, wearing nothing more than a pair of track pants worn soft with age, Dean is flat on his back, left arm curved over his stomach. His right is on the pillow above his head, fingers curled inward a little. The sheets are tangled in a heap at the bottom of the bed, twisted around one bare ankle. In sleep, the lines bracketing his nose and mouth have softened, making him look years - decades - younger.
Sam hunches his shoulders inward, curls in on himself and watches Dean sleep with single-minded intensity.
The sun has limned the soft hairs on Dean's arms and belly, lending his pale skin a soft sheen and making faint shadows in the hollow of his belly, just above his groin. When he shifts, mumbles restlessly under his breath, the same shaft of light catches his hair and turns it into a blazing halo against the dark green of the pillow.
Not for the first time, Sam thinks his brother is beautiful.
He squashes the urge to reach out and brush his finger across the smattering of freckles across Dean's nose and instead clasps his hands firmly in his lap.
Dean is not his to touch, not his to love any longer.
Castiel's handprint seared into Dean's skin is proof enough of that.
Dean has been good to Sam, better than he knows he deserves. He took Sam back after Sam got out of hell, tended his wounds and fed him, clothed him and made sure he slept. He's even been there after the nightmares, holding Sam and keeping him safe from the shadows in the dark.
Sam has been able to offer his brother nothing in return, nothing save himself: he's still mute, still has nightmares of the cage, of and is still the same, pathetic creature who unknowingly betrayed his own flesh and blood and the entire planet. Sam has nothing but the darkness in his soul; he's evil now, tainted and unworthy and ugly and completely unworthy of Dean's love and respect and trust and affection.
Dean is so clearly the better man, and the last thing he deserves is a little brother who nearly destroyed the world. Dean is the chosen one after all, beloved of angels and god.
The sun has climbed steadily higher; bathed in white and gold Dean looks otherworldy and angelic, and Sam can almost imagine wings, pure white, spreading upward from his brother's back.
Sam shifts a little in his chair, squinting at Dean through the shadows that enshroud him.
He wonders, faintly, if Dean would let him curl up on the edge of the bed beside him, and let his light wash away Sam's darkness.