Disclaimer: I don't own a thing. A.N. So, of course my own birthday had to happen on Wincest Wednesday. XD I might have to thank Jack for that. And now I have an earworm from Tiziano Ferro (I'm Italian after all): "che anche se non valgo niente perlomeno a te ti permetto di sognare..." "That even if I'm worthless at least I allow you to dream..." Ok, I'm an angsty thing so it could be an arguable dream, but if you like a heap of despair with your wincest, enjoy! XDDD (And remember: kudos and reviews are the best gifts, bar none.)
Eclipses never last
Sam has always liked the sun. And not just because Dean's freckles look gorgeous on him. Well, his brother is always gorgeous, but it's weird like any new element seems to only add to his beauty. And no, not even because they give him a perfect excuse to stare. Look, he's used the "I'm trying to figure out which constellation they actually look like" alibi more than once.
Dean would call him a freak, sure, but also laugh, indulgent, and if Sam was really, really lucky, ruffle his baby brother's hair. Just to disrupt that weird focus, and he has never known (will never, ever know) that his definition is more than exact. Sam is a creep, a monster, a...there are no words for how deeply twisted he is, but at least he just looks. There's no harm in looking, is there? If Dean was a model, or an actor (he's pretty enough, and then some) it'd be understood that people from all over the world would watch him and lust after him and never, ever have the slightest chance to touch him.
Sam couldn't be bothered with a normal crush like that. How could he when he had Dean around all the time, with the certainty that he's more than just gorgeous? He's kind and caring and clever and brave and nobody's ever going to measure up to him.
He could, though, hide it, if with some difficulty. Lucky him that it wouldn't occur to Dean that his baby brother could ever be so fucked up.
Still, not every thought, taste, and feeling of Sam was entirely wrapped in Dean, as much as sometimes it can look like that, even to himself. If the only thing sunshine was good for was making Dean even prettier, he wouldn't have gone to college in California.
After all, Dean not being there was entirely the point. "I want to be normal," he'd insisted, in total earnestness, without detailing exactly what about. "I deserve to be safe," and if the chance of accidental discovery (of getting what was coming to him, or should) terrified him more than any hungry, clawed beast, well, it really wasn't dad's business, was it?
He'd tried his best, honest. Enjoyed the weather, the courses, the friends. (He could make friends! And they were going to see each other for more than a month!). Then...well. He should have known better. He did know better, in a twisted way, he just refused to admit it. He's still Dean's little brother. Maybe he hasn't mastered denial at Dean's level – the man could teach a PhD on it – but he could definitely talk himself out of acknowledging that history could repeat itself. Especially when it came with a side helping of "you're a freak on even more levels than you assumed."
Dean saved him then – what else was new – and kept saving him since, over and over and over. Even when Sam told him he shouldn't, or didn't want him to, or explained that he wasn't worth it (never actually saying why, of course). Why would Dean listen to him anyway? Sam had a long, long history of making exactly the wrong choice, as far as he knows. (He's worse than that.)
As long as Sam's alive...he can't have all he wants, he can't get it right all too often, he's a mess of monumental proportions...but he can let himself enjoy the little things. A jog at dawn. Riding with Dean into the sunset towards the next case. Nobody's gonna be hurt by that. (He destroys people, simply by existing in their general vicinity, but he's learning to be more careful).
Until the day Dean isn't saving Sam anymore. No, he wants to kill Sam, and he's not even a demon – not anymore. He's just scared, and not himself, not really, what with the Mark twisting him around, but it's okay. It's okay because Sam will fix it. Well, Rowena will fix it, but same difference. Sam put her to the task, and she's not going anywhere until Dean is back. Not even if Sam does, indeed, die right now. He can trust Cas on that. So it doesn't matter, really, if Sam dies. So long as Dean knows he's good (unlike Sam), knows it'll be alright, he's owned Sam's life since long, long ago, and he gets to dispose of it however he likes. Dean can have it, if he wants.
...Or, apparently, not. The thrill is so heady Sam's almost lightheaded with it. Dean still loves him Dean still loves him Dean still loves him. Not in the twisted, sick, evil way Sam does, because he's Dean. But God.
...Yeah, about that. Sam has already broken the universe once, or near enough, but he'd had the best of intentions. For all the "Don't" he heard, nobody bothered to explain fucking why. He wouldn't have unleashed Lucifer if he knew; he's many things, but not an idiot.
Or wasn't, because this time? He had his phone. One call, and the plan would have been aborted. Fucking Death himself was concerned, you'd think that should have been his cue that the matter was serious. But an unspecified Darkness against Dean's well-being? Sam hadn't hesitated one second. Let it come. It sounded underwhelming anyway, in all honesty. You don't have to be afraid of the dark, per se. Only of what lies in ambush in the shadows. Who would have expected her to be god-tiered, and capable of destroying the entirety of creation if she really wanted to?
Ok, fine. Sam will fix it. It's his mess. He'll find a way to take her down, or lock her back up, if only because she keeps insisting she has a bond with Dean. Look, one is the maximum amount of self-proclaimed bonded supernatural beings Dean can have at any given time, okay? And Cas already claimed the spot. (Also, Cas is friendly; harmless, most of the time).
Besides, Dean doesn't really enjoy her attentions. Which, for something of the female persuasion, is rare enough. Dean is his brother, if nothing else, and Sam isn't going to let him be harassed by what must technically be the original cougar. If the universe stays standing afterwards, well, the universe can count itself lucky.
Would he have preferred a different solution? Maybe more definitive? Hell yeah. But if he has to stick to the pottery barn rule, okay. Cain's gone. The whole point of this is making sure Amara can't get to Dean (maybe not for Chuck, but for him). Sam's going to be the cage, this round. He could devolve into hysterical laughter, but he has to hold it together, at least for a little while. It's not exactly encouraging if he's already half-mad before anything happens.
His brother tries to snatch his place, of course – if Dean didn't make a bid for self-sacrifice, he wouldn't be Dean. Or maybe he'd have earned some self-esteem in the meantime, but they didn't have a few decades for him to attend therapy twice daily before handling this. Sam's this close to giving Chuck the dressing down he deserves, but – priorities. Amara first. Hopefully, there'll be time afterwards to set him fucking straight before he loses it completely. Dean isn't tainted, he's the best any human being can dream to attain, and if Chuck can't see it he has a problem. (Honestly, of all the chaos that his choice has brought on, the most unexpected result has been discovering that Lucifer might have had half a point about his dad. God's an asshole. Sam sometimes wonders if it is a dad thing.)
Dean's unhappy, of course. Wonders what he's supposed to do with Sam when he's going to go full-on bloodthirsty maniac monster (let's be honest, it probably won't take long). As if it isn't obvious. If Amara won't let Sam die, the only thing to do is contain him. Slam him somewhere demon-proof and throw away the key. Maybe the dungeon. But if Dean wants to keep it for eventual guests...anywhere, really.
So long as there's a demon trap etched carefully enough and he can't get out, Sam's not picky. Buried alive like Benton. Inside a fucking mason jar like Dorothy. They should have the instructions for that spell somewhere. Dean only needs to forget about him afterwards, and he can. Of course he can. Hell, if it helps, he can just pretend Sam's detoxing again. He had no trouble with the panic room, did he?
The little detail that Sam won't be free this time, not till the end of creation, shouldn't matter. In fact, maybe they shouldn't wait for him to go mad, or near-so. As soon as he has her, Sam'll happily let himself be led to his new forever home. Chained up, trapped (in and with the darkness) any way Dean chooses, left to his own overactive brain's torments and hellish whispers. That's what Sam is made for. What he, evidently, deserves. So long as Dean will be okay, he's ready. Almost eager.
The nice thing is that Dean won't have to see him anymore. Amara won't let him die, so there's no reason to keep him fed, give him water, or anything, is there? Out of sight, out of mind. He won't be tainting the world anymore. Most importantly, he won't hurt his brother.
It was always a bit of a Hail Mary plan, but they had fucking God at the helm. He was supposed to know how to handle his own sister, shouldn't he? Dean might not always know how to stop Sam from ruining everything, but he definitely knows how to lock him up when necessary. Instead Chuck got his ass handed to him, Sam is Amara-free, and the universe is ending. Again. Still. Quicker than usual. And everyone seems cool with it, let's get drunk and let it happen. Sam barely holds back from grabbing everyone and shaking some sense into them all. Things aren't finished until they actually are. Why despair instead of thinking?
He should have. He should have followed Dean's lead, just drink the last days (day? Hours?) away before Chuck fully dies, the dimmed sun turns into a black hole and they're all absorbed into nothingness. Hell, make it count. The world's ending. God has been flirting with Rowena earlier. Perfect occasion to come out. Kiss Dean. Sure, he'll get punched for it, and his brother will loathe him and hate him to the end of the universe, but that won't be long. So, would it matter, really? He could die having had a little bit of what he's ached for all his life. It does matter, actually. He doesn't want to disappoint his brother. This is his mess, he's going to fix it. He is. So Dean will be proud of him for figuring it out. (And alive, most importantly, and Sam won't have destroyed the universe – again.)
It's not surprising that he comes up with the idea of killing her. He hates her so much, for what she's turned Dean into, for the hold she has on him. It's more shocking that Chuck agrees. But he thought he would do it. Dean was, after all, incapable of harming her, wasn't he?
When Cas says they need someone with a bond to Amara – no. No they don't. He wants to scream, to fight them, to...but he doesn't have an argument. Not a rational one. Not anything beyond snarling, "Keep your filthy fucking hands off my sibling, I don't care if you fucked up with yours." They're not going to listen to that, not with Dean willing (always so willing to self-destruct). Even with God out of commission, he can't fight off Crowley, Cas and Rowena at the same time. This is the witch's payback. He – the spell, but they all knew her motivation for performing it – demanded a sacrifice of her to rid Dean of the Mark. Now she's breaking his heart.
He can't stop Dean, can't beg, can only let him go. Even when he wants anything but. He should have shut up, it's cruel of him, but he points out to Dean he's dying, implicitly begging him to stop. To say he doesn't want to. Because what he wants is to kidnap Dean and find a way to take the bomb off him, and if Dean asked – if Dean gave him permission...
But his brother knows it's unlikely he could figure it out within an hour. If he's exploding anyway, he deserves to save the world in the process. And Sam gets it, he does. He wishes he didn't. He wishes he could do something. He wishes he didn't have to agree to his brother's funeral plans. He should have thought of something else, anything else. He should have kept his mouth shut. But he hasn't, and his brother's dying, and just last year he was functionally immortal (would it matter, really, if he turned into a demon again?) and now Sam killed him. Sam might as well have killed him with his own hands. Wrong choice after wrong choice and Dean's leaving and he'll die alone, this time, because if Sam was there he would mess it up. They know he would. It's all he knows how to do.
He tries to busy himself with making Chuck's passing comfortable, as if doing that will make up for not being there for Dean, but God disappears on him. Literally, from one blink to the next. He thought that there'd be at least something left behind after God passed. But in a way, it's right. No distraction for him, nothing to do or think or feel except Dean, Dean who isn't here, Dean who went to die, Dean that will not leave him with a single atom to find, bury or burn, not after an explosion like that. God-level death. It feels fitting.
Still, for a few minutes they're stuck there, looking around as if Chuck could have decided to play hide and seek instead. As if he was strong enough to. Then, well, sitting there is even more pointless than it ever was. They go outside and the sun's right there... bright and getting ever brighter. Someone's talking, but Sam can't hear them. He's too busy letting those rays carve him up, char him to the marrow. Dean's gone. Dean's gone Dean's gone Dean's gone Dean's gone. Someone is steering him, and it's Cas, but it doesn't matter. Dean's gone and it's Sam's fault and why is he still breathing? Why didn't they put him down at birth? Or even before that?
Sam can't say he's all there, or that he will ever be again, when he slips back inside the Bunker. That's the right place for him. Underground, hidden, where he can't sicken anything else, where the sheer light isn't accusing him of pushing his own brother to his death. He might never resurface again. The Winchester boys: one dead, one buried. It sounds right.
Cas disappears before Sam can start to worry about how to explain that, and their impregnable bunker (not from demons, not from monsters, not from anything) has been invaded, and in another life he'd be concerned. But now he barely listens, the gun in the strange woman's hand hypnotic. A promise. He doesn't have to stay alive, doesn't have to... The only words that cut him through is "Where's Dean?" because of course even British gals have heard of his brother, of course they want him.
"Dead," Sam forces himself to admit, and after that, every word, every move is calculated. Shoot shoot shoot shoot. Come on.
She does shoot him, but in the leg. It's not fair. It's not fair making him stay alive when Dean isn't. She and her accomplice tie him up and lead him away, and he almost wants to explain they don't have to, it's not like anyone would come visit, and he can't go out, he can't go back – but if he wants to be put down he has to be a credible threat, and that's not going to work.
At least they slam him into a trunk and then drag him down to a different basement, so they get it. That things like him shouldn't be allowed into the light. Really, Sam would be grateful to them if they didn't play so childishly. Torture, yes please, that's what he deserves anyway. But going from Lucifer to these pretty faces is like being an avid reader, desperate for a distraction, and going from Milton to reading the mineral water's label. You do it, if there's not a better option. But it won't exactly scratch that itch.
If it wasn't anathema, he'd laugh when the lackey says, "No one can take that much pain and not break. No one." Weren't they listening? Dean's dead. Sam is broken, shattered already before they started teasing. They're toddlers taking a hammer to a sandbox and complaining it's not doing anything. Sure, you can destroy sand further. All the way down to atomic fission, if you want. But not with any implement a toddler's capable of handling, and Sam is too impatient to bother educating them. What does it take to convince the bitches to put him down? He deserves it. He needs it. (Either he'll find Dean again – unlikely, because why would anyone let him in heaven – or, more probably, hell, but at least someone there should have the ability to handle him. No playing around anymore.)
Until finally, gloriously, it doesn't matter. Because Dean's here, and his brother doesn't even know if he's alive, but it doesn't matter. Maybe it's yet another hallucination, the last twitch of Sam's brain in the process of liquifying and dripping out of his ears. Maybe they're all dead, one way or another. Mom's here, too, and it might be demonic influence once again, using anything they can pull from his brain to toy with him. Or maybe he did end up upstairs, someone's mistake, but his brain wouldn't unstick from the torture he knows he deserves, and they decided to come get him.
He follows them anyway, couldn't not , no matter where they lead. Blinks getting back out to sunlight, bright and warm. Like Dean. It feels so real, so – and his brother has an explanation for everything, his existence, mom's, and can he let himself believe it? Are they waiting for him to swallow it before finally pulling the wool from his eyes? Truth is, he doesn't care. He'll take any Dean, for however long, and be grateful.
Later on, when everyone else is asleep (or so he hopes), he finds himself padding to Dean's room. To check if it still exists, if Dean has poofed out of existence (again). But no, he's there, breath regular for once, eyes fluttering – must be dreaming – and Sam, greedy bastard that he is, walks in further, the need to touch so strong it hurts. Even knowing that Dean will sleep through his presence in the room, but definitely not through that.
Sam tries to hold back, he does, but he's a weakling, and he needs Dean more than air. Barely a brush against his knuckles, and Dean sits up, fighting-ready and wild-eyed.
"I'm sorry," Sam mumbles – there was no chance to say it, not really, with mom around, and it's been choking him, like ...like a goddamned hairball, he imagines.
"Come here," Dean replies, tugging him down, and Sam goes more than willingly. Sits right by him, makes himself small so he can curl into his brother a little. Under his wing, like when he was a kid, and didn't know how to destroy the universe with a word.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He doesn't know how to stop. He might never say anything else again.
Dean's petting his hair, like Sam deserves it, and says, "It's okay."
That breaks through his litany. "No, it's not!" Sharp and angry, like his brother wasn't – and should have been. Never mind that things had worked out and he'd managed to talk down Amara. The Apocalypse almost happened, again – worse than last time, even – and it was all Sam's fault, again. Dean should be livid. Should be tired of him, after so many years. (The demon version of his brother had been right, and that's exactly why Sam couldn't stand it.) "Why did you even bother saving me, I'll just fuck up everything again." It might take him a year or two, but there's no doubt, is there? If he's not put down now he'll stumble onto another way of destroying the world. He's that big of a freak.
"Why... Christ, Sammy. Okay. Gonna find us another case in an asylum. So they can explain to your college brain in fancy words exactly how fucking pathetic I am when you're not at my side. Fuck everything else. It's sick, seriously."
It's that last adjective that rings a bell, too loud and clanging in his mind. It can't be right though, this sudden suspicion, can it? Because Dean's good. But if he isn't... Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe when Dean realizes exactly what a monster Sam is, he'll murder him and save the world (and himself, more importantly) once and for all.
So he kisses his brother. Uncertain, desperate, hungry, half-expecting to be bleeding in a moment. Instead...instead Dean kisses back, surprise melting into eagerness and escalating to passion. When lack of oxygen forces them to part, after a second Dean's chuckling.
"Only you'd wait for this till we need to go skulking around a parent all over again. Years, Sammy. Years."
He could have – with a little backbone... "But we're going to, right?" he asks, want and need and just a smidge of whiny baby brother he can't help in his voice.
"Couldn't stop me if you tried." And as if enough miracles haven't happened lately, Dean swallows, then continues. "OK, that came out wrong. But you know what I mean, bitch."
It's Sam's turn to chuckle. "Yeah, jerk. Kiss me again before we wake mom up."
... Sam still loves the sun. One of Chuck's best ideas, really. And yes, being finally allowed to play connect the dots with Dean's freckles, using his tongue, has a lot to do with it.