Cas' body language in "Reichenbach"
What’s going on in Cas’ head in this moment?
I don’t think it has anything to do with romance, at least not on his part.
What it looks like to me is that he’s stopping her, catching her hand before she can touch him.
It’s the way he takes hold of her hand, fast and with what looks like a strong grip. It doesn’t look like a gentle gesture, as you’d expect it would be if he were intending for it to be a tender moment. Neither does the expression on his face indicate tenderness. He looks a little pained, still, and he doesn’t look her in the eye when he thanks her.
Perhaps that wouldn’t be anything to say it wasn’t supposed to be a tender moment, but compare that to any time he’s saying something similar to Dean and it stands out as different, because Cas very rarely says anything important or heart-felt to Dean without looking into his eyes. Usually for about half a beat too long.
In both these instances, Cas says, “Thank you,” but they’re negative images of each other—with Dean, he’s looking into his eyes, speaks, glances away, and then looks back up to meet Dean’s eyes again. With Hannah, the only time he looks into her eyes is that brief glance after he speaks, and then he looks away again.
But that’s not the only thing that pings me as Stop. It’s the way Cas pushes her hand away from him just before he speaks.
It’s really subtle, and very hard to catch in the gif because it’s so fast, but something about the way his hand moved made me pause when I first saw it, and when I went back and watched the scene again paying particular attention to his hand, I saw this:
The camera is panning up, but you can see that it’s only moving upward if you compare the position of that squiggly thing in the left side of the background in the three photos. If you look at the point of the trenchcoat collar, you see that Misha is moving away from her. So either he was pushing her hand away or he was holding her hand still and moving away from her himself, neither of which indicate tenderness or romance.
It seems very clear that Hannah is developing feelings for Cas, but nothing I’ve seen this season is telling me he reciprocates or sees her as anything but a sister, a friend, and a “good soldier.”
