Hi, I'm back with another longer story. Let what know what you think.

The Last Remedy

Dean would have gladly done a second stint in Purgatory if it meant Sam's suffering would end.

Sam had gotten shot clear across the country from the bunker, and the drive home is as brutal as it is long. Every pothole, rough stop and lane change is torturous, Dean knows.

His little brother internalizes pain like fuel, but abdominal injuries are different. Even with painkillers, it quickly becomes too much. The strong antibiotics combined with the rocking of the car have added nausea to the post-surgical, post-hunt agony.

Sam slinks out of the rest-stop bathroom, fingers trailing on the rock brick wall for support as he weaves towards the car. His hair is stringy and dark from dampness, and Dean can't tell if it's because he's sweating from fever or if he'd splashed water on his face in the bathroom after throwing up again.

Dean leans against the hood of the car, hands clenched in his pockets and forces himself not to help. Sam would only shrug it off.

He sees the dread in Sam's face though, his cheeks somehow fading to an even starker shade of white as he prepares for the agony of cramming himself inside of the Impala. He's already popped two stitches.

"Smells like a sewer in there," he mutters as he staggers passed.

Dean bites his lip and slides over a bit, knocking Sam's hand off the doorhandle. "There's a flight—Salt Lake City to Kansas City. You'll be on the ground in Missouri in three hours. Drugged up and unconscious in five," Dean hedges.

Sam wrinkles his nose and sags against the car. "Kansas City is hours away from the bunker."

"Renna's friend Aisha said she'd pick you up…or you can steal a car. You love doin' that."

Sam shivers a bit. "I'm fine, Dean. Let's keep pushing 'til dark."

Dean scoffs. "That word doesn't mean what you think it means." Sam has abandoned the regular clothes and bravado he had after leaving. His always prim and proper little brother looks slightly homeless in Dean's too-short navy blue trackpants, a convenient button-down orange flannel, and a cheap, too-big "Welcome To Idaho" hoodie Dean snagged on the way out of state. "You need rest and quiet and nerdy documentaries on Netflix, not bumping along the Impala for eight hours a day with a stapled-together gut!"

Sam's face hardens to granite. "Someone has to chaperon you...make sure you don't OD again," he shoots back. He tugs on the doorhandle until Dean relents.

The below-the-belt remark doesn't hurt Dean's feelings. He's still euphoric that Sam's alive to nag and snipe at him that someone could Molotov the Impala and he'd barely flinch. It does serve as a visceral reminder of Sam's emotional state. Neither of them are ready to let the other out of their sight, and Dean can't argue with that.

-SPN-

Dean pushes for three more hours before they settle into a Holiday Inn for the night. The room is spotless, and is painted a cool blue that takes the edge off of Dean's anxiety.

He waits until Sam is asleep and snoring, thanks to Percocet, and slips into the bathroom to take advantage of the endless hot water supply. The heat feels good on his aching ribs and head.

The bathroom has always been a sanctuary from the Winchesters. He used to find Sam curled around books bigger than him in the various bathtubs across the country.

Dean let's the big brother composure slip away, and allows himself to worry about Sam's health, fret about his own sanity, and just breathe.

The shower, a carafe of coffee and the normalcy of Sam snoring in the bed next to his with reruns on in the background is enough to stabilize Dean, who's been in a freefall since taking this nightmarish hunt.

Finally, he sleeps.

-SPN-

There are a few fundamental principles to Sam that even Lucifer couldn't alter: Dean will never understand the depths of Sam's intelligence; Sam always operates in the extreme; and Dean will always be the person Sam needs when he's scared.

It's why he snaps from REM sleep to a hotel room filled with lopsided light and Sam's tremulously calling his name. Dean scrambles out of bed, ignoring his screaming ribs before he registers the upended lamp, a tipped over bottle of water gurgling onto the floor, and his brother perched on the edge of his bed, drenched.

Sam's teeth clench around burgeoning screams, and his fist is tightly knotted in the top sheet.

"Sam, what?"

He sees it then, and wonders if he's stumbled from slumber directly into a nightmare, because blood dribbles through the negative space of his fingers pressed over his belly. Dean cradles Sam's face in his hands and flinches at the heat wafting off of him. Infection was inevitable, and they had all taken precautions to control it. Apparently, the beast didn't want to be contained.

"Hang on," Dean runs into the bathroom, snatching a towel off the rack as he heads towards the sink. He loops the entire length of his under the cool water of the faucet. He grabs the first aid kit on the way back, trailing water and bandages in his wake. When he returns Sam is wilting off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Dean drops everything and controls his descent. He folds Sam's too long body over his own bended legs. He laves his face with the soggy, bleached towel and realizes that it is a dark pallor than Sam.

Sam startles, and tries to retreat from what has to be arctic cold on his fevered skin. "...can't keep track, D-deeeen. Where're we?" Sam croaks.

Beyond the burn of the fever, Dean can feel the tightness of Sam's body and that he's breathing in rapid pulses, like he's run miles into headwinds. His pulse is far weaker than it should be. "Don't worry about it, Sammy. You're not missin' anything important. Think you tore your stitches a little, bud."

Sam's head flops back in his lap, even as his eyes dart about the room as if following something. "He did it," he seethes, eyes pinned to empty space over Dean's shoulder. A chill licks up Dean's back.

He huffs into the air, checking for frost, evidence of a ghost, but room is comfortably warm. Sam is just delirious. "That bastard's not touchin' you again, Sam. I got this, don't worry." Dean gruffs.

Sam's response is a ragged whine. Dean gently lifts his chin, and curses. Sam's eyes are glassy and eerily vacant, and he's mumbling what sounds like a perplexing mix of Enochian and Latin. Fevers always coax out Sam's darkest nightmares, and it doesn't help that that of Lucifer and The Cage are painfully close to the surface.

"I need to look. Can I look?" Sam had been protective of the wound, opting to change the bandages himself.

"Hurts...worse than when I was shot, Dean." Sam's hand is still pressed to the wound and he's fighting against the pain and whatever beasts leer from the shadows.

Dean is already dragging the motel room phone off the nightstand and dials the front desk. The operator greets him far too chipperly. "I'm in room 451. My brother is hurt and bleeding and needs an ambulance rightnow. Call them right now and direct them to the room."

Dean peels his fingers away and inches up Sam's shirt. Only then does he know why Sam hasn't let him see it. Just a glimpse of it makes him gag. The bullet made a clean, albeit, bloody entry but his ordeal in the woods had torn it wide. Now it is an ugly, puckered mess smeared with the odorous markers of infection. Only three stitches remain, the rest are snapped and erect, like the bent tines of a fork. "Hospital-grade my ass."

And Sam was more than just shot. There are wide blotches of his bruises stretching over his ribs and chest like super-sized leeches and bandaged abrasions on his hips. "Jesus, Sammy."

Dean bandages peels off the sodden bandage, tears open a new pad with his teeth and holds it to the wound with even pressure. At least Sam picks the optimum time to pass out.

For the third time in four days, Dean holds his gravely injured little brother and hopes they can fight off death one more time.

-SPN-

The infection has spread to Sam's blood.

And Dean feels a double-slap of insult to worsening injury at the notion of Sam's blood causing him harm. His surgeon, though he's livid at the shoddy care he received at the clinic, is still confident that Sam will recover after debreeding the wound and flooding his system with fluids and stronger antibiotics.

The problem is that Sam's fever burns away his lucidity like a wildfire cutting through drought-dried lands. Dean quickly figures out how Sam tore his stitches. Sam writhes and wiggles on the bed like a boneless conduit of fear. He mutters in archaic languages and fights devils that aren't there. When a fearless but slight nurse catches a flailing elbow to the face, even Dean can't convincingly argue against soft restraints anymore.

He now resides in an intimate hell where his brother, gut-shot, delirious and ripe with fever, pleading for the kind of help Dean can't offer. His voice only further upsets Sam. His touch plunges him deeper into his delirium-born terror. Thus, Dean can only sit beside the bed and force himself to find the silver comfort in the erratic, too-fast beep of the heart.

It happens gradually, but Sam ramblings are diminished to barely audible whispers, small snuffles of sound that are become more peaceful than paranoid. Dean hovers over the bed, eyes flickering to the monitors and gently reaches out to grasp Sam's hand. Sam sighs in his sleep, head turning towards him. Offering the barest of grins, Dean unbuckles the soft restraints, and holds Sam's hands instead.

His fever breaks sometime around dawn, though Dean's unsure of the day. After seeing Sam's progress and labwork, his doctor cautiously begins to talk about recovery and discharge.

Eight days after Sam was shot, Dean guides his brother into his bedroom in the bunker. Groggy from the drugs and hindered by pain, Sam can only watch Dean piles his bed with pillows.

As he's done for days, Dean ignores his own exhaustion to tend to Sam, who's still worryingly weak and noticeably thinner. But Dean is still running on a euphoric mix of relief and gratitude. He can keep going as long as he has to.

"All right, Sammy, few more minutes and you'll can knock out, okay?" He places Sam's arm around his neck, their knees bumping awkwardly, and eases him upward into a slightly hunched stance. They shuffle backwards in a bleary-eyed waltz, until Sam's near the middle of the bed. His little brother's fingers twist into the collar of Dean's shirt as he braces for the discomfort of engaging torn muscles. They both exhale, stooping in a swift, smooth motion. Sam's head lulls forward, too dry hair and warm skin thumping on Dean's shoulder as he rides it out. "I gotcha, Sammy...bring your legs up, okay? Just like the doctor showed us." Dean says.

Dean hooks an arm under his legs and lifts as Sam sags against the mound pillows. "You good?"

"Mhmm...home," Sam smiles, eyes already sinking shut.

Dean swaddles him in blankets to insulate against the bunker's chill. "Can't remember the last time I tucked you in, dude." He says sinking down next to Sam.

He grabs his head that aches acutely now that Sam's comfortable and safe, and the fumes of energy he was running on dissipate. The utilitarian order of Sam's room wobbles and smears in front of him.

Sam pries his eyes open to stare at him pointedly. "Get in."

"What?"

"You're done, dude," Sam's fingers latch onto his sleeve with the arm still bearing his hospital bracelet, but he doesn't have the strength to tug. "C'mon. Jus' crash here."

Dean wouldn't have put up a fight if he could. He toes off his boots and settles ontop of the covers beside Sam even though he's rumpled and smelly from three days of bird baths in the hospital bathroom and hours in an overheated car. Sam merely flings the corner of a blanket over him.

In the morning Dean will say he only did it to monitor Sam's fever or to make sure he didn't tear his stitches open again.

In the morning, Sam will ignore the tear stains on Dean's pillow and that they'd woke up cuddled together like puppies.

But as the security of the bunker yawns around them, it also locks in the panic and reality of what could have happened to both of them.

After days of hospitals, surgeries, sutures, and medications, the last remedy is simply each other.