Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. This is just for fun.

Frail and Bedazzled

They are in a forest. It is winter; a bright and brutal January morning and there is snow on the ground, a virgin white blanket covering the forest floor. The only indication that anyone has been here are their Man-Friday footprints winding past trees and bushes. Sam's feet are huge. Dean's are smaller by several sizes, and make Sam's footprints look like those of a bear in boots.

There is no noise here, save the occasional mad screech of crows who sit precariously on bobbing branches, heads turned sideways, their bright, button-black eyes squinting at these two strange creatures plodding through their forest, invading their space. How odd they are, these tall, long-legged things. How big they are. The birds keep their distance.

Sam and Dean are used to cold and snow. They are used to frost and numb feet, despite wearing several pairs of socks inside their steel-toe-cap boots. They are used to the tips of their long fingers going red raw and painful against the relentless steely cold of wide-open spaces, places without electricity, without the combined heat of house after house after house. These places are wild, mostly untouched by men. Maybe once some over-confident trailblazer had attempted to build a cabin here and live off the land, but it was too remote. The silence was deafening, and the noises that bounced off the static trees during the day and night were too weird, too difficult to place. People who tried to make a living out here generally died, or were never heard from again.

First it giveth, then it taketh away...

The forest is full of life and death. The frozen corpse of a rabbit juxtaposes itself against a flurry of twinkling snowdrops, blithely merry despite the cold, the damp, the vast covering of trees countless years old, things that will live on until mankind loses all rhyme or reason.

Sam likes it here. He likes the heavy silence and the soft, pleasing crunch of his boots against the snow. He likes the heady hum of his own thoughts. He's not like Dean in this sense. Dean favours noise; sounds that hurt his ears and make him talk louder than necessary. He likes the hubbub of people and neon lights and shrieks of drunken laughter at stupid hours of the morning in grim bars that stink of stale beer and split whiskey.

Sam's always been strange like that though.

Dean was always the outgoing one; relentlessly cheerful and confident, with a grin as potent as a bullet from a gun, and just about as effective. He was like a light that drew in moths, a beautiful, paralysing, golden thing. People wanted to know him, wanted to touch him, wanted to call him by name with a familiarity that was not theirs to use, but just like a light that drew in moths, he always left them startled and dizzy, and more often than not a bit injured too, to the bones and the heart.

Sam didn't like to watch Dean when he hustled lesser mortals, perhaps because Sam felt that same need to grab Dean by his collar, to twist his knuckles around the plaid fabric of his cheap shirt and push him into the nearest wall, hissing swear words at him while he lost himself in Dean's eyes, eyes that mirrored the firework of lights and colours of a seedy bar. Eyes that looked like Christmas. Sam doesn't have to look now, but he can tell that Dean's eyes are glowing, reflecting the bright snow and bright berries and bright shining holly leaves that surround them.

Sam and Dean had been walking for some time, and had not yet found what they were looking for; an unmarked grave. This forest was vast. They could be walking for days before they found even the slightest hint of what they were looking for. Dean stops and pulls out a crumpled map from one of the deep pockets of his old leather jacket. He turns around in a full circle, with a frown on his face that is so sweet that Sam wants to pull him closer and kiss it away.

Dean mumbles something vague about them being in completely the wrong place and Sam does not reply. He is lost. Lost in almost the same way that those old trailblazers has been – lost staring into something so beautiful and terrible that it does not so much excite the senses as tear at your very soul. Sam is being sucked into the golden light and doesn't care. He is a moth.

Dean looks up, and fixes Sam with a look that is hard to read. He asks if Sam is alright, and Sam nods a dumb assent. There is snow in Dean's hair. He looks like an angel. It's a cheesy comparison, but Sam can't think of anything else that can come close to the radiance that encapsulates his brother. The snow on the ground seems to make Dean even paler than usual, and every freckle stands out like a jewel.

The forest goes drip drip drip around them. Somewhere in the distance a bird makes a noise like a scream, piercing the silent air like a shard of glass through the sick, throbbing, bloody muscle in a boy's chest.

Dean says Sam's name again, his tone questioning, and Sam feels every neurone in his brain fire suddenly. In two long strides he storms towards his brother and pulls him into a kiss that tastes of cold and pine needles and spit. Dean's long, Roman nose bumps Sam's smaller, straighter one, and the tips are freezing.

Clocks wind and unwind, tides crash and recede, seasons change and repeat and as surely as this strange little planet revolves around a gigantic and terrible star, Sam loves his brother, loves him, with every fibre, every piece of bone, every sinew, straight down to the marrow.

Time does not age, nor hesitate, and neither will this.

It is heart-shaking.

Sam pulls away and loses himself in the wide-eyed beauty of Dean, who stares back at him like a deer or a stag. Sam can't tell which.

Then Dean's startled face bursts into a smile. It's like the sun bursting through the black clouds of a typhoon and Sam drinks it up as gratefully as a thirsty man.

"What was that for?" Dean asks, a gentle blush forming on his high cheekbones, every eyelash suddenly defined.

"Because," Sam replied. He does not need to say anymore than that, and they both know it. It is the most beautiful moment of Sam's life. For that moment there's nothing but Dean, nothing but himself, dead-centre in a section of this earth populated by them and only them. There is no such thing as shame here – only snow, only the mad chattering of crows and the crunch of feet, the gentle whisper of a kiss and the brush of eyelashes. The awkward crumpling of a leather jacket and a barely audible sigh of joy. The fact that Sam forgets his own gaunt elegance in his blind worship of the light-haired man who he has wrapped his long arms around is beauty in itself.

The birds keep their distance.

Time will not, cannot quench this, despite, because.

Dean runs his hands through Sam's silky dark hair and sighs, breathes him in, loses himself in the singular pessimism of that hangdog face.

There are no words. Just the drip of melting snow, just the thudding of hearts.

This was just a little one-shot, so sorry about the length. Hope you enjoyed it though, and remember to review. =)

~ Lux