Fame Crazy (Sequel to Strings Attached)

Chapter 175

A/N Happy birthday to Jensen Ackles, the only member of J2M to never have played Lucifer!

Eventually, Castiel has to leave, and he heads over to Jody's show. He spends way too much time on instagram, scrolling through posts about the album. Apparently, it's the general consensus that track six is the best track, but he can't actually remember what track six is. The only reason it's even occurred to him that everyone likes track six is because someone made a joke about track six always being the best on every album, thinking Castiel was going for a "666" joke.

Eventually, he's forced into going onstage, and has to abandon his phone. He's been told before to leave his phone in the dressing room, but, as always, he takes it with him because he's a rebel.

The crowds cheer as Castiel walks on, and he waves, just prompting them to scream louder. He takes a seat on the small fancy bench across from Jody. He's vaguely aware of the fact that it used to be a chair, but he doesn't mention it, because then everyone would know that he actually doesn't make a habit of watching the show.

"Hey, Jody," he says with a grin.

"Hey, Castiel. So, your new album's out now." She holds up the copy of it that's sitting on the little table between them. "Tell us about it."

Castiel raises an eyebrow. "You're jumping into this really quickly like you have something else planned for later and I'm kinda scared. But, yeah, new album. I know people were getting really impatient because it's been well over a year since my last one, but I think it was worth the wait.

"I started the album out with, like, twenty-five tracks to choose from, and it was basically just going to be another one of my albums. Then I started going through my fans' Instagram accounts — which sounds kinda freaky but it's not, I promise — and the person they kept talking about just wasn't me. They'd talk about this badass, overly-gay, super happy person who gives homeless people cats in his free time and —"

"What would a homeless person do with a cat, though?" Jody asks.

"Exactly!"

The audience bursts into laughter, and Castiel pauses, waiting until they calm down to finish speaking.

"And that was kind of what sparked the idea of 'what if I became this person?' I basically scrapped the entire album and wrote a whole new one in a week, and each track represents a different personality trait that for some reason, people think they see in me that isn't really who I am."

She nods. "Right. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed this, but there aren't a whole lot of love songs on his album. Is this something we should be expecting for now on, or is it just a one time thing?"

Castiel pauses, trying to think of an adequate answer. Finally, he says, "I don't know. The nice part about not having had a boyfriend in the last seven years was that no one was able to pin my songs on someone. I know people tried to figure out what had happened in my past relationships, but that was all on me, and no one really based their opinions on someone else off of my music. Now that I do have a boyfriend —"

The audience cheers at that. Castiel isn't really sure why. No one likes Dean, so that can't be it. It's probably just because the gay guy is talking about his gayness in action.

"Now that I do have a boyfriend," Castiel repeats once people have quieted down, "I know any love song I write, people are going to assume it's about him, when it's honestly just as likely that I'm writing about, like, Jesse from The Mediator or whatever. I just don't want to affect anyone's reputation with my music, ya know? And I can see him sitting over there and laughing at me and I'm not entirely sure why."