Hands
At first, it’s the hands that break him.
The water in the bowl sloshes over the rim, soaking Dean’s cuffs. Carefully, so carefully, he’d rolled Cas’ sleeves up his arms, but forgotten to do the same for himself. Secure your own oxygen mask first, and then assist the other person, he thinks, and fuck, as if he hasn’t always hated flying.
He hates this.
Cas’ fingers are starting to get kind of stiff, curling in as the vessel’s muscles pull tight; Dean’s handled more than a few dead guys in his time, but somehow the implication of it shocks him more than anything, and he has to take a second to turn away, gulp for air. The damn bird is still knocking its beak against the window at intervals, still taunting him with that mellifluous dripping call – it startles and squawks when he charges forward and slams his fist against the warped glass, lifting in an abrupt, indignant flurry of wings only to settle on the railing a few feet away.
In the yard, Sam’s caught the commotion and looked up. He takes a few quick steps toward the house, but Dean manages to catch his eye and wave him off with a curt shake of his head. A few more minutes, Sammy. Let me have just a few more.
He hates this.
Dean’s grateful that Sam can be as collected as he is, as mindful; he’s not there to see the way Dean cradles one of Cas’ wrists in both his palms, the slip of his thumb over blue veins. He doesn’t see the furtive press of lips to knuckles, doesn’t catch the tremor that rattles down Dean’s spine – these things are his alone. Dean’s never seen an angel with dirty fingernails, so he does the best he can with his bowl and his cotton cloth, feeling suddenly so tired, so very earthly. He rubs fragrant oil over ragged cuticles, works a little between his own hands and runs them through Cas’ hair, trying not to linger too long at his temples, the nape of his neck.
More holy oil, in a shallow porcelain dish. A fingertip dipped in, and carefully, so carefully, marking the sign of the cross on his blank forehead. Then a touch to each of the eyelids, to each ear; a shining smear over his lips, two lines quartering his heart. Righteous man, once, but never religious, and now he’s grasping at broken straws, some half-assed idea of last-ditch last rites, trying to curry the favour of an absent god.
Breathing fast and shallow, Dean blinks away the blurring edges of his vision, reaching forward to fasten the shirt again, to straighten his lapels. He loops the tie in, attempting a tidy Windsor knot even though his hands are shaking, rolls Cas’ sleeves down and closes them around his sturdy wrists. It’s when he’s pulling the sides of the goddamn trench coat snug around his sides, smoothing the dark jacket over his chest, that he feels it. It’s hard and rectangular and he’s sure he knows what it is even without looking, but he fumbles it out of the inside breast pocket anyway, turns it over in his hands, traces his own blunt writing on the label.
For a second he can’t see anything, the world narrowed down to a haze and the press of rigid plastic in his fist, the rush of air escaping his lungs all at once, and the painful twist of something he can’t name pulsing hot behind his sternum. “Okay then, Cas,” he says softly. “Okay. Okay.”
