Everything was taken care of ahead of time. Stocking was, of course, grateful for the help. But, it took him far too long, in Dean's mind at least, to finally finish feeding the animals so that he could help get the pens cleaned up. Perhaps it would have been better if Stocking was named Molasses. People gave out molasses for a Christmas present, right? It would fit the motif, wouldn't it?

As the would-be-elf and his one night lover walked away from the seclusion of the stables, there was nothing other than the silence which kept them together. Maybe it was the smell. Magical world or not, animals still crapped, and said crap still smelled. And, given the fact that Dean had spent a lot of time around it, he really felt like he needed a shower or a bath. But how did an elf take a shower or a bath? Did they even do that? Luckily, as a Winchester, Dean had become accustomed to not bathing for an extended period of time. Certain luxuries in life, like cleanliness and, to a lesser degree, sleep, were viewed as accessories and not fundamentally important. To be fair, Dean had never been on a mission that required him to almost roll around in reindeer droppings… until now. However, to her credit, Holly didn't seem repulsed by the smell. She walked by his side, even if she refused to look at him.

"You freezing me out for a reason?" Dean asked. "I mean, I just saved our asses over there with that guy so that he wouldn't see us basking in the afterglow. And ever since then, you've just been quiet. Is everything okay with you?"

"I…" and she thought about lying to him. Saying that all was right in the world, but she couldn't. "I don't know, really."

"You're going to need to give me more to go with than that, Holly. I'm an elf, see the ears?" He touched the tips of his ears, pushing them forward as a display, and he still hated the way they felt. Though the human whom he had bedded seemed to enjoy them, and so did Holly. Girls, apparently, seemed to dig pointy elf ears. Who knew? "I'm not a mind reader."

"Did it…" there was a pause, a struggle. It wasn't easy for her, but she needed to have it come out. "Did it mean anything to you?"

"What? Having sex with you?"

"No, picking up reindeer poop…" she rolled her eyes, "of course I'm talking about the sex, Mistletoe. Did it mean anything to you?"

"I like you, Holly," and that was true. He liked many women, in a variety of ways. Sometimes, he even cared about the person who became a short-term lover, as was the case with Holly the elf. "You're very beautiful, and you're sweet. You're the kind of person who is really hard to forget about or dislike because you just have this aura around you that makes you likable."

"You have that, too."

"I do?" Dean asked, somewhat amazed. "Do you mind telling my brother that? He'd love to hear it." The look on Sammy's face when Holly proclaimed that there was something about Dean that made him likable? That would be the best Christmas present that Dean could ever hope for.

"You still haven't answered the question…"

"I didn't expect last night to happen," Dean began. "And, a part of me knew that it wasn't the right thing to do. But I wanted it. I wanted you." Maybe a part of it was because Dean had never had sex with an elf before, or in an elf body. He was all about exploring things in a sexual manner. But it was more than that, and he knew it. He wanted Holly because she was worth wanting. "I don't regret it. Not one moment of it. So, yes, I guess it meant something to me."

"It meant something to me, too," and the brief smile that was on her face quickly faded into a somber frown, "but that doesn't mean it's going to last, does it?"

"I don't follow you."

"You're different, Mistletoe. I know you're different. I can feel it."

Dean almost stopped in his tracks. Did she know? Was there something about the way that he had performed the night before that had given away the fact that he wasn't a true elf? Was he bad? No, he couldn't be bad… at least that was what his frail male ego needed to tell itself to feel good. "What do you mean? How am I different?"

"Because you're going to leave once this is all over. Santa asked you to come here from wherever you and your brother are from originally. And, once you help him beat that black cloud thing, you're going to leave. Unless you can't help him. In which case, it won't really matter what we did last night. We'll be dead. So, you see, either way, last night isn't meant to have any lingering impact."

"You're… not quite like most of the girls I've met before, Holly." It was refreshing. A girl without expectations, that wasn't a whore.

"Maybe that was why I wanted it as much as I did," she said. "Because, yesterday, it really hit me that every day here could be the last one that I have. I mean, I've always known that, deep down. But when I saw that thing coming for me, when you pushed me out of the way and got hit instead, I knew. I knew that it would be over, and it could be over in a snap. Besides, if I could have had anyone to be with, I'm glad that it was you."

"You're really scared about all of this, aren't you? Scared about what could happen. Scared that we might not win."

"Can you blame me?" Holly asked. "Look around you, Mistletoe. Everyone has that fear in their eyes. Even Santa. And he's the one who has always been strong. Always told us that there would be a way to fix things, to make them all right. That way we could keep on doing what we do, and keep children around the world happy. More than that… I'm not ready to die yet."

"You're not going to die, Holly," Dean grabbed her hand. "I pro…"

She shook her head, "Don't. Please, just don't. Don't try and make a promise that you really can't keep, even if you're doing it for the right reasons, just so that I could feel better for a little while."

"Okay," Dean wouldn't keep her in a sense of false hope if she didn't want it. "But I can assure you that I'm going to do everything that I can in order to make sure that you and everyone else keeps on ticking for a long time to come. Not a promise, just a vow to do my best. How's that sound?"

"Perfect," she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek gently. "Why don't you come back to my place? You look, and smell, like you could use a bath. My parents are both working at the factory right now."

"You live with your parents?"

"Of course. I'm too young not to live with my parents! They won't mind, though. I promise. Come on, let's go."

Dean allowed himself to be taken by the hand and led towards Holly's home. The woman still lived with her parents? All of a sudden, he felt like he was a teenager again. Or, at the very least, a pedophile. It was hardly a pleasant thought. Maybe the worst part about it was the fact that he still didn't regret anything that he had done. In fact, if given the chance, there was almost no doubt in his mind that he would do it again. Holly had said it best. They didn't really have that much time left, in case it all went south. What normal American male in his twenties wouldn't want to spend the last few days of his life engaging in some casual sex? Well, his brother, apparently. And, if Dean didn't know for a fact that Sammy wasn't, he would swear up and down that his little brother was gay. He just had an aversion to letting himself have fun.

Sam continued to flip through the pages of the books that he had gotten on loan. It would have been so much easier if his brother had been around. And yet, predictably, Dean was nowhere to be found when he was needed the most. Even more predictably, Sam continued to have some sort of foolish faith in his brother. Dean was the one who wanted the job more than anything else in the world. Sam might have been the one who vocally seemed to understand the weight of their situation, their birthright, but they both knew that, deep down, it was Dean who took it to heart. After all, Dean never ran away from it. Not like Sam, at least.

It wasn't easy, though. It was far from easy. All the research, and aside from theories, nothing concrete. It wasn't supposed to take that long. It was supposed to go quick. A simple operation. They were supposed to know what they were up against and how to beat it. Especially after days of trying to find out what it was. At least they had seen it. For all the good it did. And, in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but damn his father for giving up the one thing that he knew would beat it. Whatever it was, the Colt would have worked. It would be worth a bullet, to save the world. Yet it lingered in the back of his mind, the true reason why his father did what he did. Why he gave up the weapon. It was for his brother. And Sam knew that John had made the right choice. Because he wouldn't be able to do it without Dean. He just couldn't do it without his brother.

"Is this what it was like for you, Sammy? When you were trying to be a college boy, studying it up, those all night study sessions, your face planted in a book for hours on end?"

"Dean!" Elation set in. His brother was okay. "Where were you? I woke up this morning and you were gone. Did you go and try to find something out? You should have woken me up, we could have done it together."

"It was better that I did it alone," the subtext was deliciously perverse in nature. Throw in the fact that their shower session had devolved into a replay of the night prior, just with a change of scenery, and the smirk on his face widened.

"What did you find out? Anything?"

"Nothing pertaining to the case, no."

"Are you sure? Because sometimes the little things that we think won't help do. And right now, every little bit of information might be that one thing that we skip. That we overlook."

"Sammy, just trust me okay. Nothing that I did, nothing that I found out had anything, anything to do with what we're up against."

"Okay…" Sam looked at Dean, an eyebrow risen because of confusion.

"I met the reindeer, though. You know that the females have antlers, too?"

"I thought they were all males…"

"Yeah, don't tell them that. They probably hate it."

"How'd you meet the reindeer?"

"I went for a walk, found the stables, they were there. Even fed one of them. It was odd, but not in a bad way."

"Animal Planet would be jealous."

"That's just what I said! Well, not really, but it all fell under the same umbrella." The urge to tell his brother of his true activities, if only as bragging rights, was strong. But Dean knew Sam extremely well. And he knew that his brother would just get upset about the fact that Dean had spent some time doing something that they both liked to do, when he should have been doing something that could help everyone involved. Goody-goodies were like that. "What about you? Anything?"

"I talked to Santa again…"

"Yeah?" Dean saw himself in the mirror as he walked around the room. His skin seemed to have a faint glow. Was it from the shower, or was it afterglow? Maybe it was both. "What'd he say?"

"He basically confirmed that his body was purged of all the negative emotions when he became Santa, like the book said."

"I wonder where it all went…"

"Where what went?"

"The emotions," Dean turned around to look at his brother, leaning against the dresser that was there. "I mean, one man, especially one man who was supposed to be as good as Santa was when he was just a human, couldn't possibly have that much negativity in their being, but where did it go? And, even if he's now something more than human… he still remembers what it's like to be one."

"It's a good question," Sam noted, somewhat dismayed by the fact that he had not been the one who had come up with it. "I wonder if he has the answer to it."

"Maybe he does. But that could be something that he doesn't know. Once they left his body, why would he care? Still, worth asking, I guess. Like you said, anything that we could go off of would be a good thing."

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you…" Sam was at a loss for how exactly to go about asking what he wanted to ask, because it seemed so odd. "I don't know, you just look different."

"Showers work wonders for the body, Sammy. You should give it a try." So close, so, so close. And it threatened to burst inside of him. But he stayed silent. Points for not coming forth with it all. Massive points.