It was Dean's hands that struck Cas the most. Those once tanned, muscular hands that had handled a blade or gun as easily as they had bandaged a wound or ghosted across Castiel's skin, sending shivers of desire down his spine and causing a tingling warmth to spread across his body, right down to the tips of his toes. Those hands were now frail and marred with liver spots, like constellations of dark stars across a pale backdrop, a reverse night sky on paper-thin skin cut across with Milky Ways of dark blue veins.
Cas took a deep breath and plastered on a smile as he turned from the kitchen counter and made his way into the living room, a glass of water in one hand and Dean's pills in the other. Dean himself was dozing in his armchair, though he had only woken up a few hours ago; one of the side effects of getting old, Cas supposed.
"Dean?" Cas nudged the bony shoulder gently, mindful of the constant ache that Dean experienced whenever he was awake and which even Cas' angelic powers couldn't ease. As Dean's eyes remained closed and his form still, Cas' heart seized in his chest, as if a cold, clawed hand was gripping it and squeezing his vessel's delicate organ. No, not now! Not today! Not like this! We still have time! Cas thought frantically as Dean remained deathly still. Suddenly, his head shifted and his eyelids fluttered, revealing striking green irises, and Cas released his breath in a great relieved sigh.
"Cas?" came Dean's groggy voice.
"Hey, Dean. Time for your medicine," Cas greeted Dean, trying to calm his still-racing heart and hide the shaking of his hands as he held out the pills and water.
"Don't need no damn pills," Dean grumbled with a surly attitude that would have made Bobby proud, but took Cas' offering anyway.
"I know, Dean. It's just to be on the safe side," Cas soothed, attempting to placate the other man; he knew it was just the pain talking.
"Hey, Cas," Dean mused quietly, voice breathy with exhaustion, although he hadn't moved from his spot on the recliner, "have you heard from Sam recently?"
Cas' stomach clenched at the question and he kept his voice even as he replied, "No, I haven't. But I'm sure he'll call soon." The lie rolled easily off Cas' tongue by now; Sam had died over a year ago, and in the end it hadn't been at the hands of a demon or ripped to shreds by a hellhound or in some freak accident caused by a cursed rabbit's foot. In the end it had been heart attack; he hadn't even woken up. Dean had begun experiencing memory loss around the same time, and so asked after his brother several times a day and Cas just didn't have the heart to break the news to him every time, to be forced to watch Dean sob with the sudden realization and become distraught only to have the knowledge slip through the cracks in his broken mind and have to relive the whole scene again only a few hours later.
Cas gathered the empty glass and took it to the sink, leaving Dean to ramble on and concentrating only on the cadence of the words that tumbled from chapped lips. Cas marveled at Dean's voice; it hadn't changed one bit since the day he had pulled Dean from the sulfurous belly of Hell, and was just about the only thing that age hadn't affected. Well, that and his eyes, which were still as vibrant and green as they had been 40 years ago and still held a spark that hinted at that beautiful, broken, perfectly imperfect soul that Cas had fallen for the moment his true form had gripped it tight.
Dean had been doing well lately; the medicine kept the pain away, mostly, and also kept his mind from deteriorating quite as quickly, although nothing, not even Cas, could reverse the damage that had already been inflicted. But Cas wasn't stupid, nor was he blind; he could read the signs. Dean's heart was getting weaker, stuttering like the tongue of a third grader, and his soul was starting to shine brighter; to writhe around restlessly, to scratch curiously at the surface, struggling to escape the frail shell that imprisoned it. Cas could've helped, he could release Dean's soul with a single touch and watch it burst from his withered body and flutter around the room like bird newly escaped from its cage; watch as it pulsed and glowed with divine intention and swelled to fill the room with iridescent light before ascending to disappear into the dove's-wing clouds, to a place he was barred from and thus unable to follow. And as much as he loved Dean, Cas just couldn't do that to himself. So he waited. He cleaned the house, and he cooked nutritionist-approved food for Dean and waited for the inevitable. He had long since stopped going out, especially with Dean. It had gotten to the point where people had begun to mistake Cas for Dean's son, but that wasn't the why he had stopped. He just didn't want to share Dean's remaining time with anyone; not the nurse at the doctor's office who took Dean's vitals as Cas stood too close, not with the young cashier at the supermarket who tried to make small talk as she scanned their groceries. No one.
"Cas?" came the quivering question from the other room, in a voice that made Cas drop the plate that he was washing into the sink with a clatter and bolt to Dean's side.
"Dean, what is it? Are you ok?" Cas demanded urgently, unconsciously reaching for Dean's wrist as if to check his pulse.
"Cas, I'm fine, I just wanted to ask for a favor," Dean replied in a shaking voice, gently covering the angel's hand on his wrist with his own trembling one.
"Anything," Cas breathed.
"When I go, I don't want to be alone. I need you, Cas," Dean said in a small voice, as if unsure of the other man's response.
"Of course," Cas replied thickly, gathering Dean's bony frame in his arms and fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over, "I'll always be here."
Dean died on a Tuesday. From the moment that Dean awoke, Cas knew that the day was to bring only heartbreak, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up and deny this awful reality. But he carried on as normal. He helped Dean struggle out of bed, helped him sit up and steadied him as a wave of dizziness as the sudden sensation of becoming vertical overcame him. He dressed him as a mother would dress her child, mindful of joints swollen from arthritis and old age, so different from the fevered undressing of years gone by. Although Castiel was always hyper-aware of everything Dean did these days, today was different; he could feel time slipping through the sieve, the grains of sand trickling through the proverbial hourglass, each precious and irretrievable.
There came a point where Cas simply sat next to Dean, each pressed up against the length of the other's body, Cas feeling Dean's warmth that signaled the life still pulsing through his body, for now at least.
Suddenly, Dean gripped Castiel's hand with a strength and intensity that surprised the angel, and his breath hitched as Cas came around to kneel in front of Dean.
"Cas?" Dean's voice came between rapid breaths and suddenly sounded very young.
"Shh, I'm here. I'll always be here." Cas whispered as he cupped Dean's face between gentle palms, blue gaze anchoring the panicking hunter to something solid before he pulled the trembling frame in closer, gripping him tight as if he were pulling him from an eternity of torment. Cas could feel Dean's caged-bird heartbeat fluttering against his own chest and barely caught Dean's next whispered words, "Cas, I'm scared. I don't want to leave."
"It's ok, Dean. You don't have to hold on anymore. It's fine, you'll be fine," Cas continued his mantra, chanting the lies as if they could somehow alter fate if he said them enough. He could hear Dean's breath as it slowed and ceased whispering past cold lips, felt the absence of a thready pulse like a great chasm in his chest. A bottomless abyss that could never be filled except by the one unattainable person who was now beyond his reach and whose frail shell he cradled in numb arms.
Cas could visualize an eternity, the rest of time stretching before him like an endless asphalt road so similar to the ones that meandered across the map and took his boys from one place to another, never staying in one place for too long; until they did. They found the bunker and made it their home and welcomed Cas into it even when he had nothing to offer them in return, no grace and no way to fight in the oncoming war except with his fragile human body, which are so easily broken. He felt the great expanse of nothingness descend and suffocate him, squeezing the air from his lungs as he clung to what was left of Dean with the grip of a man drowning, and he sent up a prayer to him as Dean had so often prayed to him, Please, don't leave me. I need you.