Fame Crazy (Sequel to Strings Attached)

Chapter 164

A/N Am I really posting this at 1:10 in the morning? Hells yeah I am!

Castiel stares at his phone impatiently. It's 12:02 A.M. here on the east coast, and the song was supposed to drop at midnight. It's two minutes late and counting, and all Castiel wants is for it to appear on Taylor Swift's YouTube channel so he can post the link on Twitter, post about it on Instagram, buy it on iTunes, and be done with it for a little while. He'll check out the responses later, but for now, he just wants the word out that he did a thing and people should care.

And finally, the notification! Castiel immediately taps it, barely glancing at the title before he shares it to Twitter with the caption, "Lyric Video for 'I Lost Him' with @taylorswift13 out now!" (Idk I needed a name) He posts a promo picture he and Taylor Swift had taken just for this to post that the song is out, captioning it the same thing on his normal Instagram, and then on his fun ex-fan-account, he posts a screenshot of the tweet with the words, "I did a thing."

He doesn't bother checking out the responses yet, just buying the song on iTunes and then putting his phone on his bedside table to charge. He heads downstairs to his award-filled writing room, grabbing his notebook and a pencil and taking a seat on the floor.

He like sitting here because he can look out the large picture window, so he'll know when it's suddenly five o'clock in the morning and he hasn't slept at all. The nice thing about living alone is that there's no one to regulate his sleep schedule, so he gets to watch the sunrise every day before he goes to bed.

The problem with this constant "let's write a song" mindset is that he doesn't always have an idea for a song, and now is a prime example of that. He writes so many about the same things — Dean, his ex flame Crowley, that sort of thing — that it's getting kind of boring. He wants to do something new, but he's not quite sure what.

So, instead of being productive, he goes on Instagram and looks for new fan accounts to follow. He starts with @StanningMishaCollinsSince2k17, or, as their profile says, Olivia. He follows her first, then stalks her profile from most recent to oldest.

Apparently, she's not online at the moment, because not only is there nothing about his new song, but there's nothing posted in the last five hours. The most recent post is a video of him at the Jingle Ball show in late 2017, when he performed for the first time ever. James Cordon, the Carpool Karaoke guy, had been crashing all the artists' dressing rooms before the show, acting as the new general manager of the event, and Castiel's room wasn't excluded.

Castiel has been sitting on the couch in the dressing room, strumming a guitar mindlessly to try to calm his nerves. Up, down, up-down-up-down. It's a very familiar pattern to him, because he's started doing that when he's nervous.

It would seem that James Cordon had just burst into his room without much warning, though in reality, Castiel had been told it would happen, already met him earlier, and been given the heads up again just before he came inside. Faced with the choice of greeting another somewhat big name celebrity and likely looking like an idiot on camera or to continue playing guitar and just talking from where he was, he chose the latter.

"Um... hi?" Castiel said uncertainly, because he had to pretend he didn't know what was happening.

"Hey, Castiel." James had just sat down on the couch without prompting, and there was barely room for just the two of them, never mind them and a guitar. Castiel had tried to put his guitar on the floor leaning against the end of the couch, but James stopped him with a, "No, no, it's fine," because he, and anyone watching, knew there was no room for guitar, and that's apparently his idea of humor.

"Okay?" Castiel slid as close to the arm of the couch as possible, putting as much distance between himself and James as he could. He made sure to exaggerate the movement for a somewhat comedic quality.