Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.

A/N: This fic is a sequel to "When You Least Expect It," in which Dean is diagnosed with Type I diabetes following the case at Lake Manitoc (Dead in the Water). I'd suggest reading that one first, if you haven't already.

This is a fairly unfamiliar genre of H/C for me, and I had to do a lot of research to get the details right, but I hope you all enjoy it! :)

"It's your gigantor body and maybe your brain, but it's not you. So just stop pretending. Do us both a favor."

"I was that other Sam for a long time, and it was kinda harder. But there are also things about it I remember that... Let's just say, I should probably go back to being him."

"That's very interesting. It's a step."

"So?"

"We do what we gotta do. And we get my brother back."

It had been a few weeks since that little heart-to-heart between the two Winchesters, and so far they really hadn't managed to make any headway. Dean was still at a loss as to how to get Sam's soul back so he wouldn't be such a giant bag of dicks, and Mr. Compassion himself was still as stone-faced and robotic as ever. They also hadn't heard from Cas since then, which meant he either wasn't able to leave Heaven and speak to them or he could and was just choosing not to. Either way, there definitely wasn't going to be any Heavenly help coming their way for the foreseeable future.

Since there was really nothing to be done about Sam until they could find some kind of clue, they mutually decided to focus on doing what they did best: hunting down the evil sons of bitches that were always threatening the lives of America's ordinary citizens.

This week's hunt found them in the small town of Bison, Oklahoma, fifteen miles south of Enid – and really, calling it a "small town" was being extremely generous. The entire town plan encompassed only thirty acres of land, most of which was uninhabited farmland used for oil drilling and tiny cattle ranches. It didn't even have its own post office. But one of the local farmers had reported cattle mutilations to the Enid Police Department almost every night this week, and every one of them had had its ribs cracked wide open and its heart removed.

It hadn't taken much searching for Dean and Sam to find the news story on the Web, and they were both nodding and muttering "werewolf" long before they reached the bottom of the article. A few more searches had led them to a few miles of forest off of Highway 81, just west of Bison. There were a few reports from locals who had heard strange howling sounds or had their dogs go missing around there, never to be seen again, and it seemed pretty likely that that was where they'd find their wolfed-out monster.

Now it was nearing dusk on February 18, 2011, the night when the full moon was supposed to rise. They were camped out in a tiny motel on the outskirts of Enid, and Sam was going stir-crazy while he waited for his brother to finish filing down their recently-smelted silver bullets so that there were no rough edges to prevent them from firing properly. Dean was growing more and more irritated by the second, finding Sam's incessant pacing distracting, and within minutes he finally couldn't take it anymore.

"Sam, for God's sake, sit down!" he snapped, dropping the bullet he had been polishing onto the table with a loud clatter.

Sam scowled and crossed his arms. "Or you could just hurry up so I don't need to."

Dean rolled his eyes. Evidently, some things about his little brother hadn't changed at all, including his stubborn streak.

"Fine then," he said with a long-suffering sigh. "I've still got a bunch of these to do, so if you're not gonna help, why don't you hit up the store for some supplies? We're running low on salt and lighter fluid, and we also need some more gauze and sutures and antibiotics for our first-aid kit. That way you'll at least be doing something other than driving me crazy while I finish these up."

Sam nodded, seemingly glad for something to do, and picked up his wallet and the Impala's keys. "You want anything to eat as long as I'm out?" he asked as he shrugged into his jacket.

"Yeah, just a sandwich or something. Nothing fancy. Oh, and," he added right before Sam opened the door. "As long as you're getting antibiotics, I uh…" He trailed off, not sure whether he wanted to trust Sam with this particular task or not.

It was a strange feeling, wondering if he should still count on Sam enough to ask him to buy insulin syringes for him like he always used to. Up until his little brother had jumped into the Pit, Dean had always known Sam would have his back, especially since they'd discovered he was a Type I diabetic immediately following the Lake Manitoc Case. In fact, Sam had eagerly leapt at the chance to help him out back then, keeping close tabs on Dean's diet and blood glucose levels when he thought his big brother didn't know about it, and even helping force sugar supplements into him a few times in the beginning when he let his glucose get too low and ended up too weak and disoriented to do so himself.

But this Sam wasn't that Sam. This Sam didn't seem to care if Dean lived or died, except for the fact that he was an experienced hunter and had a lot of knowledge that Sam still needed to gain from him. Otherwise, though, there was barely any evidence that they were ever brothers. Dean had spent an entire year managing his condition on his own, refusing to let Lisa and Ben in on this particular weakness, and so trusting Sam with something that could really hurt him if it was done incorrectly was now very difficult for Dean to do.

But he knew that if he wanted to get the old Sam back then he was going to have to start placing more faith in him, too. Trust didn't just work one way, after all. Realizing Sam was still staring at him, head turned to one side as if trying to read his brother's mind, the older Winchester sighed and relented. After all, what were the odds of Sam messing up something this simple, really?

"Yeah, uh, as long as you're at the pharmacy, could you pick me up some insulin syringes? I just used the last one this morning and I need a dose before we leave…"

Sam nodded, not scoffing or smirking like Dean had worried he might. "Syringes, got it. Be right back."

"And make sure to get the orange-topped syringes, not the red –"

"I know, I know," Sam said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I used to do this for you all the time, remember? And unless you got diagnosed with a whole new kind of diabetes that I don't know about in the last year then I bet I still remember what supplies to get."

And with that he was gone, leaving Dean to stare after him in shock for a few moments before returning to the bullets.

"Smart-ass bitch…"

Before long they were off to the hunt, Sam driving the Impala since he'd actually been on a hunt with Samuel in this area before and knew the terrain better. Dean hadn't been too happy about it, but Sam wasn't bothered; his brother seemed to have been unusually moody ever since dinner for some reason, and the younger Winchester could think of no reason for it. At least he hadn't complained when Sam had come back with the requested syringes and a sub sandwich for him, although he did squint at the uncapped needle Sam handed him in the motel room's dim light like he thought something might be wrong with it before drawing up his evening doses of long-acting and fast-acting insulin.

They continued for most of the half-hour drive in silence, Dean fidgeting in his seat like he couldn't get comfortable and earning a raised eyebrow from Sam before he noticed it and hurriedly sat still – for a while, at least. Within a few more minutes he was back to squirming in his seat, changing his position from sitting up straight to sitting with one leg crossed over the other, then leaning against the window, and then sitting up straight again.

"Dude, do you need to take a piss or something?" Sam asked him, the constant fidgeting beginning to irritate him.

"Shut up! I'm fine, okay? Just shut up," Dean snapped, crossing his arms and leaning against the window again.

"Fine, fine, forget I said anything," Sam said, throwing his hands up in a mockingly placating gesture. Dean just snorted and continued to ignore him, and Sam was happy to do the same.

They finally reached the outer edge of the forest – none too soon, in Sam's opinion – and got out of the car, grabbing their silver knives and guns with silver bullets before heading off into the trees. Sam led the way, Dean trailing unusually slowly behind, and the younger Winchester wondered more than once if something might be wrong, since Dean almost always insisted on being the one to walk out in front. Then again, he could just be tired. Sam might not need to sleep anymore, but Dean certainly did, and the number of yawns Sam could hear him stifling in the background seemed to indicate that he hadn't met his quota last night.

With that thought, he soon let the matter drop.

The two of them continued their long trek through the brush and foliage, Dean stumbling more than once over tree roots and cursing quietly, and Sam rolled his eyes. His brother really had gotten rusty if he couldn't even handle a walk through the woods. Sleep-deprived or not, this was just getting pathetic.

After another few minutes of listening to Dean's loud, clomping footsteps, which ordinarily would have been very quiet and graceful for a man of his size, Sam had had enough. He turned around, ready to tell his brother to just sit down somewhere and take a breather while he went on ahead, and then stopped cold.

There, standing only a few feet behind Dean with its mouth held open in a snarl and its canine eyes wide and glowing in the moonlight, was the werewolf. He had expected it to be a little more challenging to find it, honestly, but he certainly wasn't going to complain about having it come to them. And as soon as its eyes met Sam's, he realized exactly what it was planning to do.

"Dean!" Sam shouted in warning, and his brother whirled around, firing off a shot at the creature but aiming way wide and only managing to graze its shoulder. The beast sniffed the bleeding wound and then roared furiously, lunging for Dean in an attempt to disembowel him with its claws, and he leapt backwards, his feet getting tangled around each other and sending him sprawling onto his back in the dirt as his pistol flew out of his hand. He coughed weakly, seeming to have gotten the wind knocked out of him, and clumsily crawled backwards as the werewolf advanced toward him.

Huffing in frustration, Sam raised his own gun and fired, hitting the creature in the heart without really even having to try. Once it had fallen to the ground he shot it twice more for good measure, watching to make sure it didn't so much as twitch before turning his attention to his brother – his brother who for some reason still hadn't gotten up from the forest floor.

"Dean, what's up with you tonight?" Sam asked irritably, striding over and offering his brother his hand so he could pull him up. "You've been pissy all night, you're tripping all over yourself, and now you forget how to shoot a… Dean?"

Dean was mumbling something under his breath, his eyes wandering and unfocused as he swatted vaguely at Sam's hand in front of him. The younger Winchester withdrew his hand, rolling his eyes at his older brother's constant stubborn refusal to let others help him, and then a few moments later he realized this wasn't Dean's way of refusing his help; it was him trying to take Sam's hand and being physically unable to guide his own hand to it.

"Dean? What's wrong?" he asked, a nagging feeling of what the old Sam would have called "dread" starting to well up in his chest.

Dean just blinked owlishly at him, taking a moment to process the question, and then mumbled, "Th' werewolf, S'mmy. Can't le' the… wer'wolf g't the gun."

"What?" Sam asked, confused. Dean's words were making no sense at all, and he was slurring them together like he did after drinking a full bottle of whiskey. What was going on?

"Can' the… w'rwolf not let the… get the gun…"

It took Sam a moment to finally realize what was happening, and when he did he could have kicked himself for not figuring it out sooner. Dean was trembling, his skin was pale and sweaty, his words were slurring and dissolving into complete nonsense, and if Sam had cared to look earlier he would have seen the way Dean's coordination was getting less and less reliable all night. Sam touched the back of his hand to Dean's cheek, noticing how cool and wet it was, and remembered the old saying a doctor had told them when his brother was first diagnosed with diabetes five years ago: "Cold and clammy, need some candy…"

It made sense why the werewolf had come to them now, instead of running away. It could smell weak prey a mile off, and right then that was exactly what his brother was, because right now he was having a full-on hypoglycemic attack, and a bad one at that. He hadn't had one in years, and never this bad, but Sam had been dealing with this for far too long to completely forget about it in a year.

"Okay, alright," he muttered, reaching into Dean's pockets and coat in the hope that he'd find some kind of sugary snack stashed there. His brother was usually good about taking precautions against things like this. Eventually his hand closed around a small, soft rectangle, and he pulled it out to see that it was a fruit and grain bar – not one of Dean's favorites, but good for sugar in a pinch. He hurriedly unwrapped it and held it against Dean's lips, trying to get him to take a bite.

"Come on, dude," he coaxed when Dean just clamped his mouth shut and turned his head away. "Your sugar's too low, Dean. You need to eat."

Dean didn't respond except to close his eyes, keeping his lips firmly pressed together and shaking his head when Sam touched the fruit bar against them again.

"Don' want… Don't wan' the juice, Sam…" he muttered, and had Sam possessed the capability he would have begun to feel panicked.

"I don't care," Sam growled, taking Dean's chin in his hand and turning his head toward the food. "Your sugar is too low and it's dangerous. Eat the damn bar."

"Nuh-uh…"

"Dean. Eat."

"Nuh…"

"Dean, dammit, come on!"

But it was too late. Dean reached up toward Sam with a shaky hand, almost like he wanted to bat the offending food away, and then all at once his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed into a heap on the ground.

"Dean? Dean!" Sam shouted, shaking his unresponsive brother and slapping his face when he didn't move. He felt beneath his jaw for a pulse, wincing when he realized how rapid and weak it was. "Shit, this isn't good…"

He looked around for a moment, considering his options. He didn't have anything here he could use to treat his brother – he probably needed some glucagon to counteract however much insulin he'd taken, and it was in the first-aid kit all the way back at the motel. There was a bottle of Gluco-Tabs in the Impala's glove box, but those wouldn't be any good right now. If Dean wasn't conscious, Sam wouldn't be able to give him a big, chalky sugar tablet; more than likely all that would do was cause him to choke.

Ultimately, it would be a lot faster if he left Dean here and went to get the supplies. After all, Sam was strong but he wasn't The Hulk, and Dean was pretty heavy. He'd be able to make it to the car a lot more quickly if he just left Dean here and sprinted. Plus, the werewolf was already dead, and it wasn't like these woods were full of wolves and bears that would come after him. But for some reason, Sam still couldn't bring himself to leave his brother alone in the state he was in. It didn't make sense; he'd never had a problem putting the practical decision first before.

He wanted to take the time to puzzle out why that might be, but he knew he didn't have it. Dean was trembling so hard he was almost convulsing, breaths weak and fast, and it wasn't going to get any better without some serious help. Ideally he should be taken to the hospital in Enid, but that wasn't going to be an option; while Sam and Samuel had been hunting here, Sam had stolen a lot of medical supplies from Saint Mary's, ending up having to knock out two cops and one nurse on his way out so he wouldn't be arrested. Needless to say, he wouldn't be welcome back there any time soon, especially with some nameless unconscious guy in tow.

"Alright then, here we go," Sam muttered, stooping down and lifting Dean over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. It took a moment to adjust to the weight – Lisa had obviously been feeding him well – and then he started off at a jog, keeping his breathing as measured as possible and making sure he didn't bump Dean's head into any branches or tree trunks. After about ten minutes, he finally spotted the Impala, thanking whoever might be listening that they hadn't remembered to lock the doors because it was much easier to get Dean into the backseat.

Still breathless with exertion, Sam slid into the driver's seat, cranking the key in the ignition and gunning it out of there as fast as he could.

"Hang in there," he muttered, pushing the pedal to the floor when Dean moaned softly. "The good stuff's just a few minutes away. Hang on…"

When Dean regained consciousness an hour later, the first thing he realized was that he wasn't in the forest anymore, but his bed at the motel. The second thing, which he figured out about a half-second too late to do anything about it, was that he was going to puke.

He rolled over and hung his head over the edge of the bed, surprised when a plastic-lined trashcan suddenly appeared in front of his face out of nowhere. His reached out with shaking hands and grasped the edges of it, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to see his dinner a second time. After a few minutes he felt confident that it was over for the moment, and he spit into the can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, panting as he rolled back over onto his back.

"Sorry about that," he heard Sam say as he removed the plastic liner from the trashcan and set it outside their door for the time being. "I kinda forgot that was one of the side-effects of the glucagon."

"Gluca… huh?" Dean muttered, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he had somehow made it back to the motel. He remembered feeling really bad out on the hunt, and then realizing it was probably low blood sugar, but by that point he'd been too disoriented to actually do anything about it, and a few minutes later he'd blacked out. Sam must've brought him back here, then. What he didn't know was how, or when, or what he'd had to do to get Dean stable again, because any time his sugar got that low he tended to have seizures and it usually took a trip to the ER to get his glucose back in line.

"Glucagon," Sam repeated, holding up the little orange case that always contained a vial of the drug and a syringe to administer it. The syringe had been uncapped and obviously used, because he could see that the two little vials of powdered glucagon and sterile diluent had been mixed together into one. "You took too much insulin and your blood sugar crashed. I had to give this to you so you wouldn't go into seizures." He strode over to the counter and picked up Dean's handheld meter. "Speaking of which, it's time to test again. Hold your hand out."

Dean numbly complied, still trying to piece together what Sam had said, and flinched only slightly when his brother jabbed the tip of his finger a lot harder than he was used to before squeezing a drop of his blood onto the white testing strip. A moment later Sam frowned, showing Dean the blinking display that read "59" and set it down on the bedside table.

"It's still too low. You think you'll be able to drink some juice and keep it down, or do you need the injectable glucose?"

Dean thought about it, rubbing a palm across his queasy stomach, and then rasped, "Juice." Like hell he was going to let Sam stab him with yet another needle unless he had to.

Sam nodded and brought him a glass of orange juice, watching to make sure he drank it all before taking the glass away and putting it in the kitchen sink. "We'll need to test it again in fifteen minutes, and you're not allowed to go to sleep again until your sugar's back up to at least seventy."

"Sam, how did…" Dean began. "I took the same dose of insulin tonight that I always take, and I made sure to eat dinner first. How the hell did my sugar crash that bad, that fast?"

Sam hesitated, and if it had been the old Sam instead of Sambot-5000 he knew it would have been guilt covering his face, but right now he just looked mildly unsure of himself. He reached down and picked up something on the floor, handing it to Dean and waiting for him to figure it out. When he did, he slumped back against the pillows, sighing as his heart sank down somewhere under the bed.

The insulin syringes in the plastic pouch all had red caps, meaning they were meant for U-40 insulin instead of U-100 and would give him two-and-a-half times the amount of insulin he needed if used them without realizing it. He had told Sam this, specifically told him not to get the red-capped ones because he knew it would cause a potentially fatal overdose of insulin, and his brother had waved him off and told him he already knew that. And Dean had almost died tonight because of it.

"You son of a bitch," Dean snarled, hating how weak his voice sounded because it made him sound less angry and more hurt. "I freaking told you not to get those damn red syringes, and you said you knew that already. Well obviously you don't – or else you've just gone color-blind since you got back from Hell! What the hell is wrong with you, Sam?!"

"I don't know," Sam said thoughtfully, completely devoid of emotion or expression. "I asked for the orange-topped ones, and I think the pharmacist gave me those instead, but the part that confuses me…"

"Is what, Sam? What the hell could confuse you about any of this?"

"I couldn't leave you there," Sam muttered.

"What?"

"In the forest, when you passed out, I thought about leaving you there so I could go get the glucagon and bring it back. It would've been faster, since I can run faster without you on my back."

"Yeah? Why didn't you, then?" Dean asked, not able to look at Sam when he was saying such terrible things, that he even thought about leaving Dean alone and vulnerable like that.

"Because the old me wouldn't have been able to." Dean looked up, speechless, and Sam continued. "I wanted to. I knew it would be faster, and it was more practical, and all of those things I've been able to say for the last year, but for some reason I still couldn't do it. Something just told me it was… I dunno… Wrong? Wrong, I guess. And the old Sam would never have left you alone. Then again, he never would've gotten you the wrong needles, either."

"Huh," Dean said, unable to smother a laugh before Sam heard it.

"What's so funny?" he asked icily.

"Nothin', just, I never thought that Sammy being an overprotective girl would be what saved my life."

Sam grinned then – or what passed as a grin for him – and handed Dean a packet of peanut butter crackers. "Just shut up and work on getting your sugar up… jerk."

Dean snorted, tearing open the package and biting the corner off of one of the orange squares. "You shut up, bitch."

Maybe there really was hope for getting Sam back after all. He still wasn't back to normal, not even close, but it was good to know that some of the old Sam really was still in there, watching Dean's back when he needed it most.

If nothing else, it was a good start.