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Castiel’s head feels dizzy as he slowly awakes and figures the face of one way too well-known demon in his mind as the memory starts coming back. Little messy pieces of retrospection stirring around in his head, making him feel numb and tired.
As he opens his eyes, he finds himself in a dark and dirty room. It's interesting how Crowley always sticks to such seedy digs, despite paying a lot of attention to his style, and hates to make himself mucky.
Castiel examines every little detail in the room as he gets up to his feet, attentive, recognizing way more than a human could. He sighs almost inaudibly when he has to approve that there's not one little mistake in the enochian angel-proofing which covers the dank and poky room.
He’s definitely stuck inside.
Noticing an odd sensation around his wrists, he moves his hands in front of him, starts to inspect the spells that are carved deep into his vessel’s flesh like a bloody bracelet. No sign of instant healing power.
This one had to be an old spell, and Castiel could imagine how far Crowley may have had to go and what he had to do to get it.
No way to get out of here. Trapped, caged and unfortunately powerless.
Effectively human. Again.
He senses, no, feels his vessel way more than he should, more than he is still used to and deep down inside he starts to feel terribly vulnerable.
He turns his head towards the massive metal door to his left, voices and muted footsteps audible on the other side.
It opens with a brazen noise and for a split second he senses an emotion appearing - the compulsion to just run through the dark gap in the entrance and escape.
It's threatens to swell over, but he shoves it back rapidly to where it came with the simple knowledge that it'd be impossible to pass the creature entering with his powers bound.
So he just stays put, watching Crowley coming in, not moving a jot.
“I see you made yourself comfortable already.”
His tone is coarse and soaked with sarcasm, his eyebrows raised high and the scrubby chin lifted up a little bit, imperiously. One hand is in his trouser pocket and in the other, as usual, a glass of whiskey; his appearance so typical that he almost looks like a caricature of himself.
Crowley briefly turns his torso around and takes a quick look over the sigils painted in red and black on the concrete walls and the ceiling as he closes the door behind him, with just a thought and a little motion of his hand.
It shuts with a noisy, metallic plonk before he re-focuses on Castiel again, still half averted with a decent hint of a smirk.
“Why, I see that the “scratches”, as you called them a while back are functioning proper again, aren't they?”.
Caustic amusement is etched all over his face as he takes a little sip of his drink.
Castiel though decides to just ignore the reference and cut to the chase immediately.
“What is your proposal, Crowley?”
The question is as deadpan and matter-of-fact as ever. Crowley loves playing games and Cas isn't even rudimentarily interested in playing along right now.
The demon pauses, mulling over the question before he even starts answering, gesticulating slightly with the whiskey-hand.
“You know, I'm still kind of irritated by – “, a little hiss escapes through between his teeth and he narrows his eyes as he speaks on.
“You know, I think we both know by what, don't we?”.
He looks annoyed as his grin gets a little more evil.
“So you seek for revenge”, Castiel supposes with a tiny tilt of his head, squinting his eyes.
“Well, I was not exactly pleased about your little god-show, ducky.”
There's the neon sarcasm-sign on Crowley’s forehead again.
For a second Castiel's eyes focus on the floor, quickly flitting from left to right. Despite that Crowley's opinions doesn't matter to him in the least, he still feels ashamed about this little so called god-show. Especially when he thinks about how it had changed things between Dean and him, even despite his efforts for penance.
“And contrary to what I told them to do, those two tossers didn't call me since you've got your marbles together again, more's the pity, but”, the glass of alcohol in Crowley's hand dissapears just like himself as he zaps right in front of Cas, threateningly close
“- you, darling, have the chance to pay me all the way back now.”
The fist that hits Castiel's face from the right comes frankly unexpected and makes the world spin around him for way too long.
He finally finds himself in the dirt, sustaining his body's weight with his right arm on the foul, wet ground and tasting Jimmy Novak's blood on his tongue. He glares up at Crowley, who seems a little more at ease, putting on some kind of amused smile.
“You know, I could just tear you apart right here and now,” his voice raises as his eyebrows do too and the smile forms itself into a broad sneer, “but where'd be the fun in that, huh?”
Castiel narrows his eyes, meticulously chasing Crowley as the Demon starts to slowly circling him.
His voice sounds provocative, he takes his time with the sentences, carefully emphasizing the relevant words and syllables and even the pauses.
“How long have you been in this meatsuit thus far? It suits you.”
Though Cas can't tell what it is, something in the demons way of behaving stirs him up badly and the angel would give a lot to beat the poise out of his co-conspirator right now. He tries to give his response a sharp tone despite his unfavorable position, sitting on the ground, having to look up to fix his interlocutor.
“What are you trying to suggest?”
Crowley stops walking, makes a breathy chuckle to himself and rivets onto Castiel a conquering smile.
He pauses for a short moment again before he answers, because the pauses are important, make others uncomfortable and insecure. They are the white every color needs in contrast to look good.
“Starts to feel a little bit different, doesn't it? Kind of like it's your own body, right?”, none of it's a question.
Something shiny, chrome-plated looking appears in his hand while he hunkers down towards the angel, lazily putting the tip of the shiv to Cas' throat and starting to move it downwards through his shirt steadily, splitting it and carving the vessels skin constantly, leaving a long, accurate scratch that is only slightly bleeding as yet.
It's a sharp, searing pain but this level of hurt for Crowley is just fiddling around, hardly possessing any real intent of causing damage with the angel-sword, so Castiel simply tries to ignore it the best he can.
“By the way – how's your roommate doing in there?”
Castiel drops his gaze, tries to avert Crowley's inconvenient close look.
“I have no occasion to be engaged in this dialogue with you, Crowley.”
Crowley, King of hell on his way to succeed, smirks - the moment Castiel avoided his eye he knew he would win.
The thing about Castiel has always been his diffidence that everyone, who looked carefully enough could see behind the apparently unaffected surface.
One just had to know which buttons to push.
He chuckles again, soundless, then speaks quietly, a razor-edged whisper.
“So you're alone in there, aren't you?” It's no question either.
Cas' face stays motionless, only his eyes wander quickly from one place to another but always focused somewhere on the ground. Crowley takes it up a notch in the right moment, reducing the distance to Castiel's still averted face to a minimum, his mouth almost touching Cas' ear:
“How does it feel, to be all on you're own – in there? Only you, completely out of juice.”
Delighted, he studies Castiel's expression slowly turning into a mixture of tenseness and unease.
He tarries for a moment, feeling his own breath hot on his face, reflected by Castiel’s neck, feeling the warmth of his skin, sensing his tension.
Crowley enjoys being the angel’s reason to feel so heavily uncomfortable. He savors making him suffer, teasing him, and for a second he has to abstain himself from tearing his teeth into the warm, soft skin under his mouth and rip at it til the angels blood splashes out.
He withdraws slowly while his prisoner's voice raises, low and strained and Crowley can practically taste the insecurity in it.
“What do you expect of all that?”
Crowley rises to his feet, satisfied, with a smug smile.
“Like I told you last time. You enslaved me, Cas, and that I really do not appreciate. So, maybe we just turn the tables now. And I promise...”, his expression darkened and he snarled “ ...you're going to obey me!”.