A/N: Set after Sam gets his soul back. I could see the boys spending the holiday like this. Sam's grateful for everything his brother's done, but Winchesters aren't good with words to start with and Sam's not all there yet anyway.

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Summary: Post-6x11. A hunt after and a little conversation between brothers during a patch-up. Sam's still not too good with words, but he knows what he's trying to say.

Garbled

Sam gets himself up, brushing off dirt, leaves, and bits of creature entrails before hurriedly making his way to Dean. He pulls his brother's arm over his shoulder and helps him up, Dean grumbling the whole time.

Sam maneuvers Dean into the passenger seat of the car, his brother arguing that he can 'damn well drive' the entire time. Sam stays quiet, not arguing with him, but not letting him near the wheel either.

He puts a towel behind Dean's back where the wound in his shoulder is in addition to the balled up cloth in front only because Dean won't quit bitching about the upholstery.

When they get to the hotel, Dean tries, and fails, to shrug Sam off of him and get to the room on his own. Sam just watches and is ready to catch him when he stumbles.

After getting around the initial, 'I can patch myself up' and 'it's not even that bad', phase, Sam manages to get him to take a couple pain killers and starts stitching up the painful, but thankfully not dangerous, wound in his brother's shoulder.

As he's stitching carefully and Dean's taking another pull from a bottle of whiskey, Sam sighs.

"It's the second hardest thing in the world." He announces.

Dean looks at him strange.

"What?"

"Being your brother."

Dean lets a little annoyance flare up. He'd gone to hell for Sam, worked with a demon to get Sam's soul back and now Sam was telling him it was a chore being his brother?

Then Dean thought maybe it was just the post-resouling and Sam was still a bit off with words and meanings. He managed a generic reply, just a bit of hurt showing in his voice as he sips the whiskey again.

"What's the first?"

Sam looks him in the eye for the first time that night and smiles, sweet and sad and sorry and grateful.

"Being my brother."

Dean feels a peace and warmth in him that has nothing to do with the whiskey.