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Castiel’s face fills the video frame, too close and overexposed, but his eyes are vividly blue. “Today,” he says, with just the hint of a lift at one corner of his mouth, “is special. Sam’s letting us do something quite rare.”
Cas draws back, revealing a couch and the current setup. Sam’s on his stomach, shirtless, taking up every inch of the cushions, with the tops of his sneakered feet resting on the curve of the couch arm. His tanned arms are bound at the wrists, sitting at his lower back just above the waist of his dark mesh shorts. The camera (and, presumably, Dean) follows Castiel as he moves to straddle Sam’s legs at the knees, facing his feet, and the view keeps pivoting until it’s focused on the textured rubber soles of Sam’s shoes at the end of the couch. There’s a taut, thick cord running from between them down over the arm of the couch, and when Castiel pulls off one sneaker, heel to toe, the neat loops of rope around Sam’s ankles are visible.
Castiel looks pleasantly calm as he slips the other shoe off, then starts peeling away the black athletic socks, revealing the long smooth expanse of Sam’s soles.
“Your feet have always been pretty sensitive, haven’t they?” he says conversationally. Sam’s feet shift as an indistinct noise comes from behind Castiel, and the toes of one foot curl up. Castiel runs one flat palm down the scrunched sole, guiding the toes back down, then holds them there for a moment as he reaches behind himself. His hand comes back into view with a shoelace dangling from his fingers.
"We don’t often get to play with them like this," Castiel continues as he wraps the shoelace around both of Sam’s big toes, securing them together. "They’re veryticklish, so I had to promise to be gentle.” He ties off the shoelace in a neat little bow that’s perfectly centered under the pads of the toes. Sam’s making more little noises again, and Cas glances over his shoulder where the camera can’t see. “What was the term you told me, about the smaller video embedded in the bigger one?”
"Picture-in-picture," Sam’s muffled voice answers.
"Yes, that. You have to figure out what software we need in order to do that. Because this would end up so much better if everyone could see the wonderful faces you’re making." Castiel turns back to the camera with a smile. "For now, you’ll just have to trust me that he looks adorably nervous."
"And we could use some new hardware, too," Dean’s voice adds. "I want a Go-Pro. The one that straps to your head. First-person view. I haven’t seen many of those, figure we could be all pioneery and stuff.”
Cas rolls his eyes. “Put one on your wishlist. The holidays are coming up, anyway.”
"I also want one of those adjustable X-frames."
"Now is not the time," Castiel scolds with a flushed smile.
"Why not? I think you’d look pretty good all trussed up in one."
“Dean.”
"Everybody, make sure you tell Cas in the comments how much you’d love to see him like that."
Castiel glares at the camera for a moment, but the pink in his cheeks significantly reduces the force of it. He clears his throat and refocuses on Sam’s tied feet.
A single finger stroke from ball up to heel makes Sam’s toes scrunch up as best they can. Cas hums happily, and without pause launches a full spidery assault. Sam immediately yelps and starts fighting the rope keeping his ankles in place, and it’s surprising how quickly his laughter takes on a desperate tone.
"I always forget just how ticklish your feet are," Castiel says. "Especially after you’ve been wearing your shoes most of the day; they’re so soft right now. This must tickle like crazy." His long fingers scribble insistently at the arches, and Sam barks out louder laughter.
When Cas first goes for the toes, he suddenly lurches forward, and manages to catch himself on the couch arm with a look of surprise. He turns over his shoulder with a mock scowl, and keeps ticking with one hand while he swings the other back and downward. There’s an audible slap and a yip from Sam between his laughter.
"If you buck me off on film, you’ll sorely regret it," Castiel warns with a chuckle. Sam only answers with a shriek as Cas goes back to tickling both feet. The ankle binding does a pretty good job of keeping them in place, since Sam’s lower legs are kept from wriggling by Castiel’s weight, and they can only twitch side-to-side in tandem because of the bound toes. Castiel’s fingers look positively torturous, the way they dance up and down Sam’s vulnerable insteps. He presses the heels of his hands just below the balls and scritches at the line of wiggling toe pads with blunt fingernails, and Sam giggles wildly.
“Here, lemme–” A hand, Dean’s, reaches in from the bottom of the frame, and Cas presses one set of Sam’s toes down against the curve of the couch arm to stretch out his sole. Dean’s fingertips scrabble at the taut ball of Sam’s foot while Castiel’s other hand flutters at the tender curve just above the heel. Sam cackles, and the same treatment is repeated on the other foot before Dean’s hand withdraws.
"Now, what I’d really like to use is a comb or electric toothbrush,” Castiel says wistfully, “but I did promise Sam gentleness.” He reaches off one side of the frame and returns with a stiff-looking feather. “So this will just have to do,” he grins.
Sam squeaks at the first brush of the feather down his soles. Then Cas hooks a thumb over the lacing that ties his big toes, holds it down, and starts sawing a rough line under the curve of Sam’s toes. The soundtrack fills with squawking laughter, which only seems to encourage the feather into quicker movements. It flicks and flutters with apparently devastating precision, and Sam wails when Castiel produces a second one to torment the centers of both his soles.
Cas is definitely right. The picture-in-picture capability would be fantastic.
But as it is, Sam’s vocalizations are a great barometer. He yelps, giggles, and cackles depending on what Castiel is doing to his defenseless feet, and his ankles jerk and twitch against their ropes in an ultimately useless expenditure of energy, until the physical reactions start to weaken and the tender skin glares reddened at the camera. Castiel remains true to his word, though, never getting rougher than a mid-intensity scurry of fingernails. That’s not to say that Sam isn’t any worse for wear. After three separate rounds of feathering between his toes, interspersed with slender, spidering fingers focused on different areas of his feet (not neglecting the sides, tops, and thin-skinned dips below his ankle bones and around his Achilles tendons), Sam’s panting is audible in every transitional break.
When Castiel finally asks Sam if he’s had enough (“Oh god please yes”), Cas’ smile is surprisingly soft, given what he’s just put the man through. He picks apart the lacing around Sam’s toes and leans over to peck a quick kiss in the middle of each oversensitive sole, making them twitch one final time. His face turns up to the camera, again a bit too close and washed out with light, to thank their viewers for watching.
Just before the video cuts out, it captures Sam’s weak sigh of, “I need cuddles.”