I realized that I've never really written a cut and dry hurt/comfort story. I aimed for that, and ended up with this. Please let me know what you think.

Carry On

As Dean Winchester careened through the misty night, he wasn't struck with the horrifying dread of his inevitable landing, but something much worse than the far too familiar and woozy sensation of getting his bell rung: embarrassment.

Demons were uniting to light the wick and detonate the world, and its presumed saviors—the guys Heaven had personally handpicked for the job—were being bested by a lowly vengeful spirit.

As Dean whirled through the air that shimmered with paranormal energy brighter than lightning, he felt that he deserved the bone-jarring lesson, and he knew the world was screwed, knew that they would lose this battle and the war.

He crashed into something that was slightly more yielding than the half-frozen ground or the sharp, punishing corners of a gravestone. This was the rock-hard, newly expanded frame of his brother. They tumbled to the ground with the graceless calamity of two bowling pins. Sam cursed when Dean's elbow jutted into something delicate and as Dean's full weight compressed the air from his lungs. The spirit was nothing more than disembodied light that flickered and sputtered in the rough outline of the man he'd once been, face a limpid pool of neon blue, hands glowing orbs of storbing gold. It would've been pretty freakin' cool, if it wasn't currently trying to disembowel them with supernatural light.

Dean ambled off Sam, gripping the sawed-off and blasted the glowworm with two rapid-fire blasts of rock salt, and grunted with breathless satisfaction when the spirit fritzed out like an old television before vanishing all together.

The wind still swirled overhead, twisting the undulating shadows of trees, and he knew the ghost wouldn't be gone for more than a few minutes.

Dean rolled to his feet, ignoring the flares of pain in his elbow and hip, and jumped into the half-dug grave, determined to finish this supposedly "easy" hunt that had now turned into one of the biggest clusterfucks of his hunting career. Sam joined him in the grave after a several long moments. His face was pale, made ever starker by the blood trickling down its side from a gash above his left eye. "Y'kay?" Dean asked, coughing as the wind picked up and he inhaled a lungful of dirt.

"Just dig." Sam gruffed, even as the cut above his eye continued to bleed.

His brother stabbed his shovel in the dirt, newly chiseled muscles bunching and shifting under his ill-fitting flannel, and soon the blood was diluted with a healthy sheen of sweat.

While Dean had managed to make it topside, the innate connection that had made him and Sam, a once formidable hunting duo, had yet to be resurrected. This new and improved Sam, who weighed a staggering twenty-one pounds more than he had remembered and moved with a lethal fluidity that made Dean flinch, had ignored the protocols that John and Dean's training had ingrained in him. After months of hunting on his own, Sam took point, played bait, and labored to remember what it was like to have ally.

And Dean knew it was because he had spent the last months as the last Winchester drawing air. He'd been on his own, on-guard every second of every day, and that definitely took a toll, obliterated Sammy's innate sensitivity, and smudged up his edges, shortened his boundaries, creating a leaner, meaner, darker little brother than the dewy-eyed, big-brained kid Dean had raised.

As much as he tried to accept it, and reassure Sam that his big brother had his back once again, Sam had forgotten how to stand down. It was evident as Sam tore into the earth as if Dean wasn't digging too, working double-time to dig the grave. When he'd reached the coffin's top, he swung his shovel up and back, narrowly missing Dean's face with the business end, and swung it down to smash the cheap lid, even as he shook from the exertion. There was a fizzing crackle above them that caused the blackness of the cemetery to hum with power. Sam shoved the salt and zippo into his hands and leapt out of the grave. "Finish that!"

Grumbling, Dean obliged. "Dying doesn't change that I'm still older than you!"

Gunfire banged above him. Kinetic light seared around the grave. Sam may have yelped. By the time Dean pulled out of the grave, the desiccated corpse of Mr. Walter Engles engulfed in purified flame, the trees were quiet, the wind was gone. All was still.

Including Sam.

Leaning against a tree, was Dean's little brother, back bunched tightly, elbow braced against the rough bark, shotgun loose in his grasp, head bowed. Dean marveled the sudden innocuousness of the cemetery without Engles' ghost. The mists that wove its way around the graves ambled back and it began to drizzle lightly, the rain snapping and hissing against the trees. It was almost tranquil.

They glanced at each other and shook their heads, ashamed. He rubbed his sore shoulder. "Remember what Dad said, 'it doesn't matter how you get it done, as long as it's done'. A win is a win even if it's a half-assed, by-the-skin-of-our-teeth, craptastic win. This first hunt back was bound to suck."

Sam shuffled over to help pack up the weapons, pick up the discarded shells and roll the fine rug of grass back over the grave—a new technique he'd picked up from another hunter while Dean was down below.

"Jesus, Sammy. Are you okay?" Dean tossed out as he saw Sam weaving a bit and limping a lot.

The fine trickle of blood now sheeted his face in tacky red, dripping into his eye and he was limping terribly, favoring his right leg. The eyebrow had swollen massively, the bruising leaking into and puffing the eyelid below.

Sam batted away the inspecting flashlight away, and cleaned up the gravesite, searching the ground for shotgun shells, the discarded shovels, a missing button. His brother was a bundle of frenetic, obsessive activity and an armor of omnipresent tension. He stumbled as he shouldered the weapons bag, hobbling for a few painful steps before he stuttered to a stop to lean against a particularly large gravestone. Fury crested within him. Dean was done humoring him, done giving Sam time to adjust or process or whatever Dr. Phil-brand touchy-feely bullshit he'd read on the internet. He snatched the weapon's bag off of Sam's shoulder, shoving Sam back when he tried to take it. "Stand down, soldier," Dean snapped, bleak sarcasm barely concealing true emotion.

Strong shoulders hitched with uneven breaths, and Sam's eyes, all dilated pupils and contracted with pain, barely met his as he let him take it.

Dean heaved the bag over one shoulder and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the blood from Sam's eyes. He clasped Dean's arm, exhaled as if the touch had grounded him, as if he'd finally understood. Cynically, Dean thought it was probably just the adrenaline wearing off and the pain taking over, but he could take what he could get, especially if that gave him an opportunity to take care of Sam. For Dean, being dead felt like taking a short nap riddled with terrible, macabre nightmares only to wake up to a vastly different world, and he still palpably missed Sam more than he ever had in his life.

Dean sidled closer until he could see the nasty gash splitting his eyebrow and the residual swelling and Sam's blistering heartbeat squeezing out an alarming flow of blood. Behind the curtain of crimson and the muddy blue, was something a little more familiar and a lot more vulnerable: it was the Sammy Dean had left pinned to the wall of a suburban living room in Harmony, Indiana.

When Sam weaved again, barely upright, one leg lifted like a flannel-hued flamingo, Dean spoke to him in the same voice, steel over tenderness. "I got point, Sam. You're safe now. Give yourself a minute and just relax."

"Yeah, 'k." And then he made another noise, a concerning hybrid between a whimper and a cough as Sam's eyes rolled back, body following in an uncoordinated slump as he passed out.

Cursing, Dean grabbed whatever was closest, heaving Sam forward to keep him from colliding with the treacherous edges of the gravestone. He staggered under Sam's dead weight, and sank to the ground, using his own hand and arm to protect his brother's already battered head from smashing into anything else.

"Shit, Sammy." He spat as he checked his pulse and breathing, which were both on the higher and weaker side of normal.

While it was alarming that Sam had fainted, sometimes the adrenaline dumps after hunts—especially combined with a blood loss—could cause it. It had happened to Dean a few times, too, but it didn't make it any less terrifying. Still, he patted Sam's cheek, called his name loudly, tried to rouse him with no success. The cemetery was serene, not too cold, and blanketed with concealing darkness, so Dean dragged the weapons bag over, propping up Sam's feet on it. Dean pressed the cloth's clean edges to the laceration, prepared to wait until Sam regained consciousness before moving him. As Dean bundled his leather jacket over Sam's new bulk, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to carry him out to the car anymore.

He checked Sam's pulse again, smoothing out the lines of exhaustion on his face and pain out with his hand. They hadn't been there before Dean had died. Somehow, Sam had aged a years in just four months, and secretly Dean had too. There were memories lingering on the edges of conscious, the threat of which kept Dean prolonging sleep, flinching at shadows and a little too alert.

He hated how that chasm of space stretched out between them, a proverbial and trauma question mark that Sam had refused to answer. "What happened while I was gone, Sam?" He whispered.

The responding twitch of Sam's eyebrow was the best response he'd gotten in the past two weeks.

Sirens echoed through those trees and Dean's head canted up from where he hovered over Sam. In the distance, he could see the glow lights of not-so-faraway homes and remembered the echoing noise of shotgun blasts. The homeowners probably heard the shots, saw the strange lights, and called 911.

"All right, Sam, up and at 'em." Dean rubbed his knuckles over Sam's sternum, knowing he'd been down for more than just a few minutes, and tried to rein in the panic. "Now would be a great time to wake up. SAM! Open your eyes."

He didn't so much as stir, and the sirens only grew louder, closer. "I hate you," Dean glowered.

Against his better judgment, he ran to the car, cranking the engine on the Impala and stowing the weapons bag in the back. In less than a minute, he was back at Sam's side, fearful that he was still unconscious, and unsure of how to carry him.

The last time Dean remembered hauling Sam from a hunt, he was a seventeen, still shorter than Dean and leaner than a beanpole, and it had been surprisingly easy. Nine years and at least a hundred pounds later, Dean knew it would be a Herculean effort. Standing over him, he moved carefully but efficiently, hoisting Sam's upper body at a 90 degree angle, tucking Sam's head against his chest. Hands under his armpits and drew in a deep breath, prayed for good measure and heaved. It took two three laughable attempts and readjustments, Dean lifting with his back and legs, and a partial aneurysm for Dean to hoist Sam high enough to fold him over his shoulder. He panted like a woman in labor and threw a hand out on a nearby headstone. Standing up with Sam's unwieldy dead weight over his shoulder was slightly easier than jacking up the Impala was his bare hands. White oily globs starbursted in front of his eyes and something tore deep in his chest as Dean locked his knees. Taking a step caused Dean's tibia and fibula to grind into the fine bones of his ankles, his vertebrae to shift. Carrying his too tall, too big little brother was going to make him even shorter, Dean just knew it.

The light of the sirens flickered over the trees, painting them in a brittle blue and red. It worked to spur him on, adrenaline pumping as the ever-flopping weight threatened to drop him. By the time he reached the Impala, Dean was covered in sweat, cramping from the tops of his shoulders to the curve of his butt. He unfurled all fifteen feet of his brother into the passenger seat. A run and hood slide later, he scooped up Sam's head and rested it on his thigh, flicked off his headlights and quietly rolled out of the back of the cemetery just as the squad cars skidded through the front gates. "I hate you," he spat again at his gigantic little brother's unconscious form.

Of course, it was then that Sam groaned, eyes blinking up to gaze up at Dean with bleary confusion.

-SPN-

As dysfunctional as it was, as much as Dean knew by the tightness of Sam's mouth and the clench of his fists that he was in serious pain, he was relieved that this was a situation he knew how to navigate. He might not be able to soothe the traumas of having Sam witness his brother being filleted by hellhounds, but Dean could wrap Sam's ankle, bandage his brow, silence the riotous fears the disorientation caused.

Leaning into the Impala and threading Sam's arm around his neck, Dean did just that. "I'm right here, Sammy. We're two towns away from the cemetery. We're safe. You with me?"

Sam's dark hair bobbed, and Dean patted his chest, reassured when his brother forced his eyes open and fisted Dean's leather jacket with a grip that belied his drooped posture and half-mast, glassy eyes. It was easier to transfer Sam from the car to the hotel room with Sam just coherent enough to shuffle-hop over broken and pitted asphalt, but just barely. Dean's lower back throbbed and spasmed by the time they made it to the doorway next to the fritzing light crusted with dead insects trapped in spindles of cobwebs. Dean didn't care about the motel's décor, only catching glimpses of wooden paneling and stained, flat pillows as he eased Sam down onto the bed, and stuffed one underneath his head; mustard yellow tiles as he snatched a bottle of water and a washcloth from the narrow bathroom. Sam melted into the mattress with a bonelessness that had Dean checking his vitals again.

Sam had been puffed up with his new badass, rogue hunter image, bolstered by the muscles and the utter lack of self-preservations that made Dean nauseous. Now, he looked young and weary as he lay wounded and completely out of it, unaware of Dean brushing the blood-soaked hair off his forehead and once again applying pressure to the weeping gash, wincing at the cleaved eyebrow. He snagged the well-stocked first aid kit, cleaned the cut with an efficient squirt of water from a needleless syringe and with a generous smear of antibiotic cream. As much as it bled, Dean thought the cut would heal with butterfly bandages, and sealed nicely when he applied them. The forehead itself had swollen massively, like someone had shoved half a tennis ball beneath the skin, but Dean knew that would take a lot ice and some time.

Sam groaned a little, legs moving in a restless scrabble as Dean used the washcloth, damped with some of the bottled water to scrub the congealed blood from his face and hair.

"You're fine, Sammy. Just cleanin' you up."

With Sam's face finally free of blood, Dean sat back and took a second to breathe, peeling off his leather jacket and rubbing the back of his neck. He secured the room, drank some water, and turned back to Sam, seeing that he was more out of it than in.

Sweating, Dean worked off Sam's puffy jacket and unbuttoned the bloody flannel beneath it, and tried to ignore the surge of memories of the last time he'd patched Sam up. It had been after Daggett had bashed Sam's face in. Back in the hotel, the residual fear still lingered there long after Daggett's ghost was gone; it clung to Sam's clothes, his skin, and poisoned him until he was so gobsmacked by what could have happened and Dean's demise looming over the bend that he'd wept through the entire thing and didn't bother pretending that he wasn't. It was Sam at his weakest and most vulnerable.

As his brother was limply still in a way Dean couldn't remember, like he was holding his brittle pieces together and the slightest shift could break him completely, he would have welcomed that lively hysteria. Dean chaffed Sam's clammy cheek with to tangibly remind Sam that he wasn't alone. "You're still my pain-in-the-ass little brother, don't forget that, man."

After working up Sam's shirt, he found that Sam's ribs were a little banged up while his left shoulder and upper arm was a puffed and a dark shade of cherry. But what really snagged his attach was a network of strange, new scars carved out along his torso and back, disappearing down his left hip in livid swirling patterns that had healed in angry keloids. "What the…Sam, what's this from? Sammy, hey. What the hell did this?" Sam's eyes were rolling open and shut like a rattling window, and he hovered over him, hoping he could get Sam to focus. "Sammy, hey, can you look at me? Come on, kid, you know how much I hate talkin' to myself like some cat lady. Sam! Up and at 'em!"

Sam's eyes floated in his direction, a darker blue peeking out through the fringe of lashes. Dean supposed the origin of those sadistic scars could wait until Sam could remember what millennium he was in. "I'm gonna go on an ice run. I'll be right back. Don't move, okay? Just rest for me."

His chin, smudged with dirt and dotted with sweat dipped a bit in a woozy semblance of a nod. Dean shook his head. "Say you hear me, Sam. I need to hear your voice."

Brows bunched together in a grimace of frustration and probably a whole lot of pain. "...goin' for…ice," he hissed, closing his eyes.

"Good talk," Dean said as he nudged and shoved Sam on his side. "Stay off that ankle and if you're gonna hurl, do it on the floor, dude."

At Sam's grunt, the elder Winchester was a flurry of activity, sprinting out to the Impala for the cooler and running up two flights of stairs to the only functioning ice machine. Lugging the heavy cooler was a much slower feat as it ignited cramping pain in the abused muscles in his chest and back that he'd used to haul Sam out of the cemetery. Dean fumbled with the cooler, kicking the door open and staggering over the threshold. The ice gave a muffled rattle as he sat it down, searching for the towels he'd snagged from the utility closet.

Panting, he glanced at the bed, double-taking when he found that it was empty. Something crunched beneath his feet, and he glanced down to see jagged salt lines laid at the doors and windows.

"Sammy?"

The click of the gun sent a reflexive tingle of wrong down Dean's spine. Had he been gone long enough for someone to barge into the room? Had Sammy made enemies while he was taking his dirt nap? Did Engles' ghost somehow survive the salt-n-burn? All of those options slingshotted through Dean's mind as he slowly turned towards the sound. The weapons bag had been hastily dumped, guns, crossbows and machetes scatted over the floor. But the yellowed light from the bathroom flashed off his favorite pearl handled revolver—one of a set of two that he'd hustled for three months in nine different states to buy for Sammy's eighteenth birthday.

And Dean's gun was still tucked in the small of his back.

He stared down at the front sight and the intricately carved barrel that subtly bore Sam's initials until he reached the sallow, battered face of his brother. His eyes were bunched tight and pain had carved deep brackets around his mouth. Sam was slumped against the wall, using the bed as cover. The gun wavered when he caught a glimpse at Dean, eyes widening. "They're coming…have t'be ready." Fear striped through him, because his Stanford-educated brother, who threw out ten-dollar words before his first cup of coffee, was slurring badly.

Dean lifted his hands carefully, palm up, and tried to pacify his brother, who still had the gun trained on him. "Sammy, no one's coming. I think your eggs got a little more scrambled then we thought."

"N-no…" he squinted owlishly and pressed a trembling hand to torso, where his thin t-shirt covered through strange scars Dean had discovered. "Demons're gonna turn me, make me the dark king…with smoke 'n sulfur 'n pain…can't stop it...no one can."

Dean licked his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, unsure of how to meander around this psychological minefield. Stern and fierce had worked with him earlier in the cemetery, but something told him it wouldn't do the trick now. Dean crouched down, sitting mere feet from his brother. "Anything comin' for you is gonna have to go through me, and I ain't no automatic door; I'm a friggin' brick wall, Sammy," he said softly but the conviction in his words was thunderous.

And instead of exploding, Sam deflated, rubbing his bandaged forehead and lowered the gun. "I dunno if you're here. Dunno where I am."

"Got that message received loud and clear. We're back at the hotel. And I'm right here." Dean easily tugged the gun from his grasp and tucked it out of sight. "Bed for you, Sammy."

Sam grunted as Dean once again heaved him off the floor. And of course, it was then that Sam bent over and vomited all over Dean's shirt.

By the time Dean settled into bed for the night, it was already morning. The night had been miserable one. After Sam's nausea subsided, the delusions returned. "Dean, I don't know what's happenin'," he gasped as Dean bundled him in blankets and secured icepacks around his ankle with two spools of ace bandages.

So Dean stayed by his side, reassuring him with his presence and voice and the gun in his hand, keeping guard over him as he hadn't been able to do in months. Sam's lucidity returned around dawn, and Dean finally crashed in the other bed, asleep before his head hit in the pillow.

-SPN-

The free-formed images that flashed at him during the day, creepy, undulating things slithering away out of the corner of his eyes and the edges of shadows, unspooled in frightening kaleidoscopic stretches. It was nothing visual emotions—blue fear, white nakedness—a ensnared in the crimson of blood, the silver of a carving blade. There was pressure, echoing sounds of squicking flesh as muscle was cleaved, and a bodily crack of bone. Dean's eyes shot open, then, panicked and sweaty, the trepidation peaked but faded like a curl of smoke.

The cinching pain, however, did not. The jack-hammering pressure that throbbed in time of his own sprinting heartbeat was still there, and growing more acute by the minute. Dean lay blinking at the ceiling, breathlessly wondering if an incoherent Sam had tried to flee and somehow parked the Impala on his chest, worrying how he'd handle it when hell caught up to him.

Grimacing, Dean tried to sit up, gasping as the horrible pressure impossibly intensified so fiercely that he couldn't get air, that every heartbeat felt like a shock of thunder, that something nefarious little creature tugged on the back of his throat so hard his eyes watered from the pain and discomfort. As a hunter and a pretty rambunctious kid, Dean had pulled muscles, been impaled, beaten, crushed and even gotten shot a few times, and those pains had rarely being as insidious as this. His first thought, as he struggled to get upright, hoping that would lift the crushing weight, was "heart attack" his next was "hospital."

Clawing at his holey t-shirt, Dean canted his head backward towards Sam's bed, flinching at how tiny movement racheted the pain up a few notches. He tried to inhale for breathe, and that was an even worse idea. It took a lot to rattle Dean, but this pain terrified him. But his newly concussed brother was sleeping hard, mouth parted and snoring lightly as he often did when he was in pain. Dean hated waking him up. So he inched upwards, ignoring the water building in his eyes and struggled to his feet, staggering into the bathroom. The change in elevation pushed the tears out of his eyes and down his cheeks. Leaning over the sink to splash cold water on his face nearly exploded his heart.

And Dean surrendered. "Sam…" He hissed. It took a few times for him to gain volume. "Sam…"

Sam shifted, waking to agony of his own. Dean's stomach clenched as his little brother whimpered and groaned his way to consciousness. His body had stiffened in sleep and injuries that had no doubtedly settled in to throb at their worst. Still, his eyes opened to find him unerringly. He stared at him, unmoving, before rubbing his eyes. "Wha..''

He felt like an ass, but he could feel the vena cava pumping against the back of the breastbone. "Need help."

He couldn't turn around to face him, but the blankets shifted. "Y'all right?" He asked, instantly more alert.

Embarrassment flushed his cheeks and the tops of his ears, but he managed a smirk. "Don't think so." The steely big brother resolve crumbled. "My chest…Sammy, it hurts."

"What's wrong? Ribs broken?"

Sam struggled upright and after a few pained groans and a string of colorful curses, he hobbled to Dean's side, gingerly limping on his swollen, discolored ankle. His hair was a tangled mess and he still smelled like earth and dirt from the graveyard.

The unswollen side of Sam's face blew open in unabashed concern and he was reaching for Dean, tearing the cotton of his tee shirt, and searching for bruising or injury. "There's nothin' there."

"T-take me to the hospital. Now," Dean gasped.

Ankle forgotten, Sam pulled his wallet out of his old jeans and bundled Dean into a hoodie and stuffed shoes on his feet without socks. The fervency of the Sam's movements spoke his blinding fear, because there were certain medical situations even the Hospital of Winchester with its whiskey drips and dental floss stitches couldn't cure.

Apparently, hospital administration didn't worry about verifying insurance when the patient was barely 30 years old and complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. Dean was usually out of his head with unconscious or blood loss or a few backslides away from death for the flurry of medical activity—the monitors, the painful prick of the needles, the glaring brightness of the lights overhead, the rapid-fire questions that was too woozy and in pain to answer.

Dean flinched as another IV was inserted and a nurse tucked a nasal cannula under his nose. The beeping of the heart monitor started, shrill and fast, as it monitored his heartrate. He peered around a nurse who kept pushing him flat, asking him if his family had a history of heart disease. The pain was overpowering him, swelling up inside of him like some ethereal poison. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face as he tried to breathe, comply with the barked instructions and stay calm even though he was terrified. That fear only ramped up his already soaring heartbeat, which only fed the agony. It was a malicious cycle for which he couldn't escape. He could only breathe in rattling, noisy huffs, and soon his head was spinning, its borders thinning.

Through the negative space of a handsy nurse and a tower of machines, Dean beheld his panic-stricken brother, eyes bouncing from the monitors to the bed, the whir of activity around him. What little color he had regained drained from his cheeks, taking the greenish twinge from the concussion with it, and leaving only a traumatic and profound panic. He instantly knew what Sam was reliving, what he was suffering through.

A nurse ventured over to Sam and gently spread her arms, trying to corral him out of the exam room. Sam bulked, back stiffing, shoulders straightening. In an instant, he transformed from the wet-eyed, emotional lightning rod of a little brother to a grizzly, weathered warrior. He planted his feet, narrowed his eyes and un-shrank to his full height, yanking his arm away from the nurse so violently she stuttered back a few steps, hands up. They stared at each other in a tense gaze before Sam bolted.

Dean tried to call out to him as a nurse injected something into his IV. There was a flourish of cold that wafted up his arm like the first brisk winds of fall, and he melted back to the pillows, relishing in the pharmaceutical relief. His head spun, lighter than air and he could draw a bit of a deeper breath, though the pain still lingered just around of the boundaries of the medication, but within minutes the drugs were winning, numbing everything and dragging him into pleasant oblivion.

Dean dozed during the EKG and the x-rays, jerking awake briefly to inquire about his brother when the doctor checked on him. When his eyes opened again, Sam was beside him, the same matronly nurse re-bandaging the cut on his brow and pressed a cold pack to it. The shoddy ankle wrap had been replaced with a medical-grade air cast. His brother's mouth turned up in a flicker of a smile in gratitude and apology and the nurse tenderly rubbed his shoulder, muttering something in a rich southern accent that reminded Dean inexplicably of strawberry jam.

He drifted off again.

Dean woke again to meaty, slightly arthritic hands palpated his bare chest, fingers moving deftly between the myriad of leads. He felt a distinct and worrying pop when those probing fingers pressed down. The doctor was an older man that reminded Dean a little of Harrison Ford with his deeply etched features and shock of thick, sandy hair. He lifted one too-thick eyebrow when he realized Dean was awake and gently pulled his gown up over his shoulders Sam was tucked silently against the bedframe, ever-present, but apparently too freaked out for words.

"…please tell me there ain't a pacemaker in there." Dean groused groggily. The spark of discomfort rudely alerted him that he magic drugs had dissipated.

"You're not having a heart attack, Mr. Erdman," he said with a hint of levity in his voice. "Your heart is perfectly fine."

"Then why does it feel like there's a freakin' mountain on the chest?"

"Did you recently help a friend move…or start weight-lifting recently?"

"…I don't…follow you."

"Your x-rays show that you have some inflammation in your chest, it's called costochrondritis. There's cartilage that connects your ribs to your breast bone," the doctor began, illustrating the anatomy by pressing a fist to his flat palm. "Certain activities, like strenuous exercise can cause it to become inflamed. Mothers often get it from picking up their kids…It sounds minor, but the pain can be quite excruciating."

Dean's stomach dropped as he felt Sam shift uncomfortably beside him, his unsplinted leg bouncing anxiously.

"So, Mr. Erdman, have you picked up anything heavy lately?"

Dean licked his lips, shifting in on the pathetic excuse of a mattress. He picked at the pulse ox monitor on his finger and gazed up at the doctor, lips pressed in a tight line. He flickered his eyes to Sam's tense form and back to the doctor, albeit nervously. When the doctor didn't seem to understand, he subtly gestured with his a cock of his head.

The physician's mouth dropped as he turned to Sam, taking in his size and impressive build. "Him? He's…gigantic…he's..."

"My little brother," Dean corrected with a scathing tone. "Look he knocked his head pretty bad…the situation was too hairy to go find a forklift."

The doctor took the hint and avoided the lecture. "We can treat you with anti-inflammatories, but you're going to be in hell for the next few days."

Dean scoffed, actually enjoying the irony. "'S'okay, doc, I got a lot of practice."

-SPN-

The doctor hadn't lied about the intensity of the pain that followed. While he was relieved to learn that his condition wasn't serious, the medication had barely taken the edge off of the discomfort, so breathing wasn't all that painful, but talking, yawning and even swallowing ignited neon bursts of torture. And yet somehow, Sam managed to corner the market on looking pathetic and beaten down; it went far deeper than his rainbow-hued forehead or the crutches that had women fawning all of him as if he were an injured knight. He was sullen, and his eyes were a haunted dark blue as he stared out the windows or at a spindly spider craft a web in the corner by the door. Sam often got quiet when he was scared, and over the years, Dean had learned that it was best to let Sam find his way back, to reassure him with tactile support, that his usually gruff sarcasm usually made it worse.

That was until he woke up from a nap to find Sam locked in the same aimless gaze, only the gauzy light of the television reflecting the tears shining in his brother's eyes.

Dean sighed as much as he could and began the arduous practice of sitting up, blowing out a breathe with a sharp, vocal exhale to truncate the worst of the pain.

Sam's head turned sharply, and he sniffled before grabbing the nearest crutch and hopping over to his side. He bent over handing Dean another pill and a bottle of water. When he reached out to fluff the mound of pillows he needed to keep him upright and not screaming, Dean grabbed his wrist. "Touch that pillow, and I'm breaking your fingers." He said, low and lethal. "Sit down, Sam."

Sam acquiesced, plopping down on Dean's bed in a brooding profile.

He rubbed his face, knowing he was going to need to shower and shave sooner than later. This, however, took priority. "You know I'm going to be fine in a few days, right? Takes more than some inflamed coastal-whatever to bring me down."

Sam's Adam's apple bobbed as he gulped painfully, and he dropped his head, concealing his eyes around a curtain of hair. Dean's shoulders dropped and he internally kicked himself. "But you probably know that, don't you? You know exactly what it takes to bring me down, right?" He rubbed his eyes and tried not to breathe too hard. "I'm not the only one that's been through hell these past months, and you can tell me about it. I want to know whatever you want to tell me." Dean offered. "Sometimes things feel like a weight that's dragging you under…but you just need someone to carry some of the weight."

Sam scoffed, and it sounded eerily like the strangled gasps he had made as he awoke from nightmares.

When Sam didn't elaborate, Dean irrationally felt like clocking him. "You want to share with the class?"

He chimed in faster than Dean anticipated. "I think you've made it abundantly clear that you can't carry me anymore," he said in an isolating mixture of nastiness and sadness.

The flare of pain in his chest had nothing to do with the inflammation. "You can hulk out like Bruce Banner, and I could still deadlift your ass or whatever's rattin' around that giant head of yours. You're m'brother, Sam. That's never gonna change."

"I'm all grown up now, Dean. I gotta deal with things on my own."

"As long as I'm breathin', no, Sammy you don't. We're brothers." Dean cringed before tackling this chick-flick moment head-on. "We're both a little busted up right now, so we can lean on each other."

Sam was quiet for several long moments, and Dean could feel him start to tremble a little, see the long strands of his hair quivering in the glow of the television. "…I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Start wherever you want, Sammy. Like, how you got those scars on your chest? Or why there's nunchucks in the trunk armory…" Sam chuckled morosely, so Dean went to the moment he knew Sam was dreaming about, reliving at the hospital, protecting him from at the graveyard. "Or you could start with what happened after I bit it…"

Sam's laugh turned into a choked sob and he shook his head, turning into Dean and burying his face into his chest. Dean held on tighter than he ever had before, letting his brother know he was still here. The words would come later, during late-night drives and over cups of coffee in downhome diners, after bloody nightmares or too-close calls. For now, though, Dean adjusted his hold on Sam, so that he was nestled against the steady thump of his heart, and they made it through just fine.

I've dealt with costochronditis for nearly 12 years, after lifting 135 pounds just to prove a point, and it's maddening.