A/N: Missing scene from "Jump The Shark." Takes place between the last two scenes of the episode. Because, admit it, Sam looks drugged when they're burning Adam's bones.

4. Hurt

They can't go to a hospital.

It's the first thing that comes to Dean's mind, and the first thing he immediately dismisses.

Sam's wrists are slashed. They'd put him in a padded room faster than they could say "crazy son of a bitch."

Still, Dean knows it's his duty to push for it anyway. It's the sane option—the normal route. He says the word softly on the way back to the motel, as if trying it on for size, an implied question mark tagged on the end. There's no reason to believe that Sam's even listening, slumped like death in the passenger seat, but the proposal is predictably written off with a strangled, "No."

Of course not.

They speed through a cluster of bugs. Dean flips on the wipers, curses out loud when their carcasses smear grey sludge across the windshield. Sam's breath hitches, seems to catch twice in rapid succession, his chest pops out, then air resumes the natural flow and he settles back into his seat again.

Dean steps harder onto the gas. Fuck, he thinks. Because…well…fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Almost there, he assures himself. Then he can get a better look and figure out exactly what they're dealing with. Sam should be fine until then.

Sam should be fine…

Dean's pretty sure he stopped the bleeding at the scene. He'd raided the Milligan house for something, anything, and came away with plastic wrap and cayenne pepper. Sam held his arms out in front of him without argument, jaw clenched tight, appeared to be drawing his strength from the ceiling while Dean packed the wounds with the pepper, wrapped Sam's arms in the plastic wrap. A little trick Pastor Jim shared with them while seasoning a turkey one Thanksgiving. Dean's sure as hell thankful now.

Back at the motel, Dean dumps Sam on the closest bed and rocks back on his heels, trying to figure out what to do first. Sam's a sweaty, shaky mess. Tremors are wracking through his tense body like a never ending earthquake. He's not bleeding anymore, Dean made sure of that back at the house, but the wound in Sam's side is different, more complicated.

Digging through the first aid kit, Dean finds some sterilized gauze packs that are so old the print has faded completely, but the packaging is intact, so he stuffs a couple squares into the finger-shaped hole in his brother's side.

God, I hope it wasn't actually a finger that…

He shakes his head, tossing the disturbing thought to the side for the time being.

Sam tilts his head back into the pillow, air sawing quickly in and out of flared nostrils, the occasional grunt coming from low in his throat.

"Sorry," Dean says automatically. And he is, even if it's not his fault.

He takes the opportunity to get a closer look at Sam's arms, determines he can probably stitch the gashes. The problem is in the last half an hour since they left the scene, Sam has gone from shivering to shaking so hard that if the bed were on wheels, it would be moving across the floor like an unbalanced laundry machine.

They try alcohol. Dean holds the bottle of Jack to Sam's lips. Sam willingly sucks back two big gulps, then chokes and gags, barely containing the hard liquor.

So much for that.

"It's pissed," Sam mumbles once he gets his breath back.

Dean looks around the room in alert confusion. "What's pissed?"

"M'body," Sam replies in all seriousness.

Dean would laugh if it weren't so true. "Yeah, well, I think you're going to need more than just a buzz anyway."

In the bathroom, Dean rifles through their dwindling stash of drugs, but they haven't had the opportunity to source any new painkillers in months and all he finds is…

"Fuck."

Sam had sworn off this drug last year when it made him so sick he practically snapped the cracked rib he'd been trying to medicate.

"All we've got left is oxycontin," Dean calls out from the doorway. He holds out the bottle, which is pointless because Sam keeps his eyes closed when he shakes his head quickly, now puffing from the pain.

Dean drops his hand to his side; the four remaining pills rattle around in the small amber bottle when it hits his thigh. God, he hates feeling so useless

Just pass out.

It would make this a hell of a lot easier. On both of them.

He tosses the bottle back into the bag and approaches Sam from the side, sits cautiously on the edge of the mattress. "I can't stitch you if you're shaking this hard," Dean admits with a resigned sigh.

Glazed eyes peek out at him, offering nothing more than a blank stare. Hardly a solution to their problem.

"Sam, you're in agony," Dean tries to reason.

"I'd rather…be in…agony than puking…my guts out." This is followed by a sharp groan and even shorter breaths.

"You keep this up we'll be at this all night." Dean waits for some sort of rebuttal, but Sam's too busy trying not to shake out of his skin to argue back. Dean rubs his fingers hard into his forehead, then drops the hand into his lap.

Sam's struggle seems to be gaining momentum; Dean knows its anxiety snowballing the pain. "Slow down, Sammy," he tries, but to no avail.

"Hit me…over the head…or something."

And that's it. He has had enough.

Sam's had enough.

Dean rises from the edge of the bed and heads for the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

***

He emerges a couple minutes later, a glass of water in hand.

"You're going to have to sit up."

No acknowledgment. Dean sets the glass on the table, slides an arm under each of his brother's armpits and nearly gets a hernia trying to haul the upper body up against the headboard.

Satisfied, Dean reaches back to grab the glass of water. When he turns around, Sam's starting to lilt forward, ready to face plant into his own knees.

Dean pushes Sam back upright with a hand to the shoulder, then holds the glass to his brother's lips.

"Drink," he orders. Uncompromising. Like Dad would. Daring to disobey.

Fortunately, Sam's altered state doesn't allow him to fully process the situation, and he does exactly as he's told.

Unlike the hard liquor, the water goes down without a hitch.

Sam's chin falls against his chest when the empty glass is pulled away. Dean keeps Sam propped up with his right hand, lifts his left hand and checks his watch.

Twenty minutes later, he pulls a much looser Sam by the ankles until he's once again lying flat on his back.

Dean threads the needle he had sterilized earlier and gets down to business.

****

"I hate you."

Sam's lying on his stomach, body stretched out across the short side of the bed. His head's hanging slackly over the edge, positioned directly over top of the trash can Dean had brought out from the bathroom.

Dean rolls his eyes, turns his attention back to sharpening his knife.

Another five minutes pass before Sam gags again, bringing up a whole lot of nothing.

"Hate," Sam says again, apparently too wiped to include the first and last words to the statement he has made…oh…at least seven or eight times now.

"Yeah, I've got it," Dean growls back. "You hate me."

Sam grunts, spits into the garbage can. He must feel like he has officially thrown up everything in his body because he gingerly rolls onto his back, shifts down a foot or so until his head rests on the mattress. His legs hang limply off the other side of the bed at his knees.

"I said no," Sam grumbles. He rearranges his arms like they each weigh a thousand pounds, gives up when they're only halfway onto the pillows Dean had previously placed on either side of Sam's torso.

"Yeah, and when those open wounds got infected, that wouldn't have made you sick at all, right?"

Sam lets out a long, slow breath, painkillers obviously still jogging through his system. "You drug raped me."

Dean freezes mid-sharpening, lets out a choked laugh. "That so?"

Sam nods, swallows, groans deeply and rolls over again. He uses his knees instead of his arms to push his head over the edge of the bed again.

It's no surprise when the heaving yields no results. Even less surprising when Sam says, "I hate you," afterwards.

Dean doesn't offer a counter argument or insult. They've been going around in circles for the past hour and frankly he's getting tired of it. If he were as high as Sam right now, he'd probably be more easily amused.

In this particular case, it's a short turnover. Sam's hate will fade in a couple of hours. Hell, he'll probably even thank Dean later.

Not that Dean cares one way or the other. It really doesn't matter. He isn't going to let a little hate stand in the way of doing what's best for his brother.

Never has.

Never will.