This scene, which I have been thinking about ALL DAMN DAY since seeing this post, does of course break my heart along all the standard Dean and Castiel fault lines. There’s the knowledge that Castiel must have known how little chance he stood against Lucifer, the heartbreak of him walking into almost certain death just to buy a little more time, desperate as he is to come back with that win for Dean. There’s also, of course, the heartbreak of Dean’s entire reaction—the increasing urgency with which he calls Castiel’s name, the parallels to Sam and Jess in the pilot, his expression in the second gif as the initial shock fades and he realizes that Cas is about to choose to stay trapped in a different dimension, again, to leave Dean, again, to choose paying for his sins rather than being with Dean, again.
But I also love the depth that Sam’s reactions add to this scene—I don’t know that they were deliberate choices for these reasons, but I interpret them a certain way and I love what they tell us not just about Sam but about Dean and Cas. In the first gif,
Sam reacts quicker than Dean, flinching immediately when Castiel comes into contact with him, his whole body tensing to fight or to run. It doesn’t matter that Cas is a friend; Sam’s attention is so wired-in on Lucifer that everything kicks off a threat response. This is the constant that always breaks my heart: whenever Sam and Lucifer are in a room together, Sam is on a hair trigger. Dean is afraid of Lucifer, too, but Lucifer never hurt Dean the way he had decades in the Cage to hurt Sam. Lucifer never trapped Dean in his own head the way he did Sam. Sam’s terror of Lucifer is something he has pushed through time and again, but the memory still lives deep in his marrow, buried so far that it’s nearly instinct by this point. In Lucifer’s presence, Sam is simultaneously less aware of his surroundings and more hyperreactive to anything coming near him because he’s so focused on what his body perceives on a bone-deep level as the single most obliterative source of danger in the immediate vicinity.
But Dean seems to know, on an almost subconscious level, before he even turns his head, that it’s Castiel brushing past him. Maybe he recognizes the sound of Castiel’s footsteps, or the specific rustle of Castiel’s clothing, or the particular feel of Castiel’s arm against his own. Whatever subtle, subconscious cues Dean’s awareness is picking up on, it doesn’t cause him to put up a guard. He turns his head in confusion, but there’s no fight-or-fight reflex. On a completely unconscious and instinctual level, Dean’s body recognizes and registers Castiel’s presence as safe.
And then, as if that weren’t enough, there’s Sam’s reaction in the third gif. Sam’s reaching for Dean before Dean even starts moving. Sam realizes and processes what’s happening slightly faster than Dean and the first thing he knows is that his brother is going to run for Castiel. This is so clear to Sam that he moves before Dean has even started doing it, and this is the only reason that Sam is able to get Dean through that portal while Castiel distracts Lucifer. (I think there’s a lot to unpack here about how Sam and Cas have a tendency to not question each other’s tactical decisions, and how they don’t typically exhibit the same instinctual protectiveness toward each other that they do towards Dean or that Dean does towards them—that’s a whole other topic though.) Sam gets to Dean probably one second before Dean would have started after Castiel, and from Dean’s struggle in the fourth, final gif, I don’t think anyone other than Sam would’ve been able to successfully pull him back. Dean’s body is canted forward, his final call for Castiel is desperate, urgent. He fights against Sam’s arm for an instant before yielding, but there’s still shock and confusion and hurt warring in his expression. On a cerebral level Dean’s still processing the gut-punch of what the core of him has realized immediately and viscerally (that Cas is deliberately sacrificing himself, that Cas doesn’t know if he’s going to come back from this) and Dean is operating mostly on instinct right now: get to him, help him, don’t let him die, don’t lose him.
Sam’s able to pull Dean through the portal for the same reason that Dean was able to pull Sam out of that burning room in Palo Alto all those years ago: in the midst of your panic and fear, your body knows that you trust the person who is pulling you back. And because you are not thinking of your survival—because, in your shock and your desperation, you cannot think, you cannot breathe, you cannot do anything but scream a name and reach helplessly for the love of your life, your body grieves, and lets this person drag you to safety.
