A/N: Merry Christmas all! So, here is a little present I have been hiding for you. After all, this is hurt/comfort, and some might say we were lacking a little on the latter... So...As you all know it might be the last day of the advent calendar, but its the first of twelve days. No Partridges in pear trees, but Winchesters galore... I give you

Advent Day Twenty-Five

Christmas Day One

Snowflakes and Icicles

Chapter Twenty-Five

On Christmas Day

Dean sipped his cocoa and watched the light from the fire flicker on the hearth. He noticed a glow growing outside as the cabin started to rattle in sympathy with the trembling of the earth. Somewhere in the back of his head, his internal clock had reset and he knew it was getting close to the twenty-fifth, Christmas, Sol Invictus or whatever was coming. From the look on his brother's face, Sam didn't know what to expect either. If the gods wanted a sacrifice, he wondered if he could head them off at the pass and give himself up. Something was niggling at the back of his head about that, he wasn't sure what, but there was something. Huh. What is it?

Sam's sharp intake of breath pulled his attention back to what was happening. Dean looked at his brother who had somehow managed to get paler. Not good. Dean glanced away from the fire, the room was full of creatures, most he'd never seen before—and never hoped to see again. It was what was happening outside that caused his heart to speed up, however. "Is that...?" he whispered.

"I don't know," Sam replied.

The dancers' frenzied steps were circling the fire they'd built and in the center of the fire the glow was getting brighter. It was in that glow that something was forming. Dean swallowed, trying to think of words to describe it. He watched for as long as he could, then looked away.

Dean made a decision.

There was no was in hell—or wherever that was from—he was letting it get close to Sam. He set his cup down on the flagstones of the hearth. Once he was out of the safety of the light of the fire, maybe his brother would let him go. Yeah, because that would happen. Dean sighed. If he hit Sam, he might hurt himself and not be able to get off the bed and out of the room before his brother was aware enough to stop him.

He'd just have to make a break for it and hope Sam had enough sense to let it happen, to understand Dean was doing it for him. The wound was getting to the point that Dean knew if it wasn't treated soon he was a dead man anyway, this way maybe he could save his brother. He closed his eyes, breathing deep, pushing the pain away so he could get up and move fast enough for his plan to work. Forgive me some day, Sammy, Merry Christmas. Steadying himself, Dean tensed his muscled and sprang off the bed, diving into the middle of the room without a second thought.

He ran into a solid wall of flesh.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam demanded, glaring at him.

"What does it look like?" Dean growled as he realized Sam hadn't been trying to stop him, his brother had been moving towards the door as well. Dean had collided with him in his desperate move.

"No way."

"I thought of it first, I'm closer to the door," Dean snapped, pointing at the floor, indicating their relative positions.

"I thought of it first, you ran into me."

"No, you ran into me, besides, I'm older, if anyone is getting sacrificed it's me."

Sam stepped towards him, doing that looming thing he did sometimes. His brother wasn't that much taller but sometimes he did that thing that made him seem feet taller. "I'm bigger."

"I'm faster."

"Not right now."

"Sammy," Dean said desperately. "I..." He never got a chance to finish. Something picked him up and started carrying him towards the door. "SAM!" he shouted, seeing the huge creature from the corner grab his brother as easily as if he were a tiny kitten.

"Dean!"

They were both hauled out into the snow, some of the creatures from the cabin filing out, other things coming out of the woods to circle the fire where the glow was subsiding and the thing in the center was completely formed. Dean closed his eyes, hoping, like Indiana Jones, it would help to not look at it. When he was dropped into the snow, he slid his hand out until it came into contact with his brother, he felt Sam's hand grasp his arm.

"Sorry," Dean said softly.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," his brother replied.

Dean could hear something approaching, with the sound came a smell, less than pleasant, that made him gag. He held his breath as it got closer and a hand closed over his chin, moving his face so the wind blew across it in an icy blast. The hand let go and there was a hard probing at the wound in his side, the snuffling of a creature scenting its kill. The pressure continued until he was close to screaming in agony. Dean's heart was hammering in his chest as it left him and moved away—he knew without looking it was examining Sam, his brother's grip on his arm tightened convulsively and he heard Sam's grunt of pain. Several long seconds later he heard the thing moving away and he knew the moment of sacrifice was there. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.

"Sam..."

"Yeah, me too."

Dean braced himself as footsteps approached and an almost human hand pressed down on his chest, there was the touch of ice cold metal. The blade began to cut, he felt his blood running hot over his skin. It stopped and the hand ran down his body.

"Wait!" a voice hissed. "Check that one, this one is poisoned."

There was a pause, then without warning, there was a huge pressure on the wound in his side. Dean couldn't stop the scream. He thought he heard his brother shout his name, before he heard a similar cry of agony from Sam. The torture ceased and he lay panting in the snow, trembling, hanging on to Sam like a drowning man as the sounds around him began to increase. He was aware, barely, of movement, things were stepping on him, over him, a foot caught him in the face. The sounds reached a frenzied point and he heard voices screaming in pain—human voices. He was far enough out of it to wonder for a moment if it was him he heard screaming. Whatever was happening became more and more intense until his body was shaking with it, the whole world was trembling. There was a bright light against his eyelids as the sound, the movement finally exploded.

Everything was silent.

Soft flakes of snow fell against his face, collecting on his cheeks and eyelashes. His back was cold to the point of pain and something was running over his neck, warm at first then cooling as it moved over his shoulder. The smell was gone too, now there was just that fresh scent that was snow. Dean couldn't describe it, but snow smelled like snow. Once years before, they'd stayed in a motel with the kind of freezer you had to defrost and the ice in it had smelled a little like snow. Dean drifted on that memory, making "snowballs" with Sam in the middle of a July heatwave. Sam.

"Sammy?" he groaned. No answer, but then, he hadn't heard his own voice. "Sam?" There, that time he heard it.

"Dean!" Sam answered.

"You okay?"

His brother laughed. "You?"

Dean laughed too. It hurt. God it hurt, but he couldn't help it. The laughter bubbled out of him like the blood from the wound in his throat. "We must suck as sacrifices," he croaked as he laughed.

"Yeah." Sam's laughter was louder too. "We're going to die out here."

"You don't think we'll get a Christmas miracle?" Dean still had a hold on Sam.

"No," his brother said. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas."

There was a crashing in the trees, something was running towards them full out, pounding steps echoing through the forest.

"Maybe we don't suck as sacrifices after all," Sam offered, laughing again.

"Comforting," Dean replied, joining him. Things were beginning to fade, the cold at his back was getting warm, which he knew was a bad sign.

Whatever was coming was close. It stopped between them, panting. "I bust my balls to get here, and you two idjits are laughing?"

To Be Continued