A/N: Chapter 150. You know what that means! An obnoxiously long chapter with the obnoxious recap!

Strings Attached, Chapter 50: Dean and Cas got together.

Strings Attached, Chapter 100: Dean and Cas got together. Again. Cuz they broke up.

Fame Crazy, Chapter 50: Dean and Cas broke up again.

Fame Crazy, Chapter 75: Dean and Cas got back together again.

Fane Crazy, Chapter 100: Dean and Cas had their first real date and moved in together.

Now, chapter 150. Voilà.

It's just passed seven o'clock, and Castiel just sitting on the couch and snuggling with Dean, trying to ignore everyone else while he scrolls through Instagram. It's hard not to hear Michael and Samandriel arguing — they're very passionate about immigration, apparently.

"You don't get it, do you?" Samandriel asks, sounding not just exasperated, but almost slightly disgusted with his eldest brother. "People out there are dying, and their only hope is leaving the country."

"And?" Michael prompts.

Samandriel scoffs. "'And'?" he repeats, his voice filled with incredulity. "Do you even care? About any of this? About anyone? I guess that would explain the whole "ace" thing. And I'm sure it makes working in urgent care way easier when you couldn't care less about anyone."

Michael doesn't say anything at first. Castiel looks up from his phone just in time to watch Michael walk out of the kitchen and take a seat on the floor in the living room instead, not saying anything.

Castiel looks around for the one person he's sure could do something productive, but Lucifer seems to be oblivious as he chats with Claire, his vlog camera hanging off his wrist and pointing carelessly at the floor. Castiel sighs.

"Hold on," he mutters, quiet enough that only Dean can hear him. He slides his phone in his pocket and reluctantly leaves Dean to take a seat next to Michael. "Hey, Mike. You good?"

Michael nods. "Yeah, I just don't want to get into it with him on your birthday." He gives his brother a smile, but Castiel can see that it's forced. "Go back to snuggling with Dean and checking Twitter or Instagram or whatever."

As much as he would like to do that, and he's almost positive Michael would be perfectly fine with it as well and isn't just saying that, Castiel decides against it, instead opting to talk to his brother.

"You know, if you just stopped talking about politics, you and Samandriel would get along fine," Castiel tells him, hoping he'll take the hint and not bring up politics again, especially near Samandriel.

"It's not I just bring it up out of the blue," Michael explains. "I don't just go, 'Hey, I know you think this, but you're wrong because...' Samandriel's usually the one to twist everything I say into something political."

"Then..." Castiel trails off. What's he supposed to say now?

"Then stop talking to him?" Michael suggests, a slight sarcastic tone to his voice.

"If that's what it takes, then sure," Castiel replies.

Michael glances over at the youngest Novak, who's now laughing with Adam as if nothing ever happened. "It does seem to be getting to that point," he admits. With a sigh, he adds, "It's kind of sad that Lucifer is probably the most respected person in the household."

Castiel's eyes go wide at the though. He quickly thinks through everyone that still lives at his old home before saying, "I can't believe you're actually right about that. You gotta get back on your game, because Lucifer can't be the head of the house."

"Can too!" Lucifer yells from the other room.

Castiel and Michael share a confused look. It's Castiel that finally asks, his voice lowered, "Is he talking to —"

"Yes, I am!" Lucifer replies, just as loudly as before.

"How can you even hear me?" Castiel asks, louder this time.

"Because I hear everything," he says dramatically.

Castiel glances around, but Lucifer is still hidden from sight, so he can't see what his brother is up to. He can hear Claire's muffled laughter, though, so he can only assume his brother had been talking to her before randomly joining another conversation. Castiel shakes his head to himself. Weirdo.

~~

Castiel chats with Michael for a while until the older boy has to take a call, which he briefly explains has something to do with his job at the hospital. Castiel joins Dean on the couch again, snuggling up with him and resting his head on his boyfriend's chest. Dean puts an arm around him, using his head as a chin rest as he uses his phone. Castiel can vaguely see the familiar color scheme of Twitter.

"People are so excited for your new single," Dean remarks.

"Mm, yeah, usually are," Castiel replies dismissively. He clicks his own phone on to check the time. "Still over half an hour, though."

"Are you gonna hype them up more for the next half hour?" Dean asks.

"You must be psychic," Castiel replies, his voice sounding lifeless to his own ears. He needs some sleep before he can act excited again.

Castiel opens Twitter, but before the new tweets load, he exits the app and opens Instagram instead. He'd rather chat with fans than trolls, especially right before he releases his first promo single off the album. He really only goes through it for the captions, per usual.

"New single tonight!" was posted this morning, and the following post on his timeline by the same account from only an hour ago asks, "Does anyone know what the new song's called?"

Castiel comments on the second post, saying, "Ooh, I know! I know! You, on the other hand, will have to wait and see. See you at 9:29 EST?" He adds a winking emoji for good measure, then saves the post so he can look for a response in a few minutes, as he does with every post he comments on.

The next post is from the previous day. It's just selfie of a girl in one of his shirts from his most recent album looking overly excited, captioned, "I just heard the song drops at 8:29 tomorrow! Idk what time zone but I'm assuming something in America."

Castiel comments on this one, as well. "Yep! Central Time. See you there? PS: love the dog in the background. Really just completes the picture." It's true. There's a dog sitting on a couch in the room behind her, just staring out the window like it's the star of a the sad movie. Judging by Misha's actions, it's probably because there's some type of animal outside that the dog would love to either play with harshly or eat.

The next one is captioned, "Still waiting to hear the album name. The suspense is killing me!" Castiel just gives this one a like instead of an answer. No one knows the album name because it hasn't left his lips.

"Lowkey thought Castiel was gonna join tumblr now that he's back on insta until I remembered this."

Castiel holds the phone up to his ear and turns the volume up slightly. He could tell from the quick glimpse he caught that this was when he was on Ellen Degeneres' show, and as soon as he hears the topic, he can place it as the first time he was ever that show, shortly after he was nominated for "Up and Coming Artist" at the Teen Choice awards, but before he won the title for the year.

"People keep telling me or tweeting me or whatever to get a, uh, a tumblr," young Castiel had been saying, his awkwardness slightly subsided. "And, like, I did, because it seemed cool, you know? But there was a slight flaw in that plan because I can't figure out how to use it." There was a slight pause for the audience to laugh before he continued, "Like, I couldn't figure out how to change my profile picture, so it's just, like, a piece of pie or something?"

After the audience laughs again, he kept speaking. "And I'm just like yeah, sure. I like pie. And my — One of my friends from high school, his true love is pie." He hadn't been sure about their relationship status at the time, because they had been drifting apart for a while, but he wasn't quite ready to call him an ex. His slight hesitation before he switched to calling Dean a friend is just as noticeable as he had feared, but he was always awkward back then, so no one seemed to question it.

Again, the audience takes a moment to laugh, and then he continues, "But I'm — I'm not a piece of pie, so that didn't really — that would've been kinda weird." And laughter. "So, naturally, I went to Google. But it — I did some cross referencing and all that —"

"So did it work?" Ellen asked. "Is this your big tumblr reveal party?"

Castiel clicked his tongue once, almost involuntarily, before explaining, "Okay, so I did exactly what it wanted me to do. I triple checked the instructions, and it — I'm pretty sure my phone is broken, because it — well, it's, like..." He had to count it out on his fingers because he was a bit rattled by the size of the audience to think straight, per usual, before finishing his thought, "My phone's almost five years old, so I'm just like blaming it on that, because I know I followed all of the directions, and it just wouldn't change."

"Then why don't you just get a new phone?" Ellen asked, then added jokingly, "Or hire a manservant to buy it for you, because you're too busy getting nominated for all these awards to go shopping."

Castiel had laughed with the audience for that one. "Yeah, that — that would probably be a good idea. The new phone, I mean, not a — a manservant. But then I've gotta pick between Apple and Samsung and Android — wait, are Samsung and Android the same thing? What even is Samsung?" The audience had laughed at that as well, no surprise there. "Well, whatever. I'd have to pick a phone and I'm really indecisive, so, um, that's not — that's probably not happening anytime soon. But yeah, that's why I'm not on tumblr. I tried. I really did."

Castiel turns the volume off to look through the few comments already there before typing his own. There are a couple of them about how cute "smol" him was, but there's only one comment worth replying to, and that comment says, "I wonder if he still has that phone. I mean, after five years, you gotta have some type of emotional bond with it lol."

Castiel quickly replies with, "No, I finally bought a new one a couple years ago, but my old phone is always in the top of my suitcase with all my old favorite songs in case I ever get the urge to listen to anything but Bon Jovi." His old phone also has a digital copy of all his albums that he buys as soon as it's released, but he doesn't mention that because if the media got a hold of that piece of information, he knows they'd talk trash about him "wanting to boost his sales" as if he thinks this one extra album will make any sort of difference.

To the original post, he comments, "The more I hear about tumblr, the more I want to make an account, but unfortunately, I'm still technologically inept, so Instagram and Twitter will have to do for now. Maybe one day?"

The next post is a picture of a tweet from none other than Bela Talbot. It says it was tweeted today, soon after Castiel posted about his mysterious birthday plans with Dean. The tweet reads, "Whoop, here we go again. Everyone's least favorite drag queen's one day of relevancy." There's another tweet after that, reading, "So-called 'stan Twitter' is up in arms just because I'm stating facts. It's ridiculous." Castiel has to refrain from rolling his eyes before he goes to read the caption.

"Still waiting for Castiel to put her in her place."

Castiel doesn't acknowledge that post, moving on to the next one, which is a picture of him and Ed Sheeran at the Grammy's last year. The caption says, "What if the reason we haven't heard anything about the new track is because it's a collab and he doesn't want to spoil who it's with?"

Castiel just passes by that post. He doesn't want to get anyone's hopes up. He continues in this fashion, trying to acknowledge as many people as he can and reply to responses to earlier comments as well.

"Fifteen minutes!" Lucifer calls. "Castiel, where's your laptop? I wanna get YouTube ready."

"Check the bedroom," Castiel replies. It's probably somewhere in there, but he can't be sure. He doesn't keep track of his things.

It's about ninety seconds later that Lucifer calls, "I can't find it!"

Castiel sighs. "Be right back," he murmurs to Dean before reluctantly sitting up. He cracks his neck, stiff from lying on his boyfriend's chest, before joining Lucifer in the bedroom he shares with Dean. He searches in a few drawers until he finds it, and he grabs his laptop, the charger, and a chord to connect it to the television monitor.

It takes a few minutes to set up, and by the time the laptop is connected to the flatscreen television with Castiel's VEVO channel up, there are less than ten minutes until the new song is posted. Everyone gathers in front of the screen. Everyone except...

"Anna, c'mon," Lucifer whines, looking out into the kitchen. "Cassie's new video's about drop."

"I'm good," she replies halfheartedly, her attention clearly focused on the cellphone in her lap.

"No, seriously, come watch it," Lucifer insists.

"No, thanks."

Lucifer sighs. "Anna, he's your brother. Come be supportive."

She looks away from her phone just long enough to roll her eyes. "Yeah, no."

"Why not?"

"I'm busy," she says vaguely.

"But —"

"Leave it," Castiel interrupts. "If she doesn't want to watch it, she doesn't have to."

"But she does want to watch it," Lucifer protests.

"No, I really don't," Anna replies halfheartedly as she types something on her phone, obviously done with this conversation. Castiel can't help but feel a pang of hurt at that. He doesn't want to force her to watch it, but it would be nice if she had at least the faintest interest in it. He works hard on this stuff.

"Who are you texting that's more important than Castiel?" Lucifer asks.

"Does it matter?"

Lucifer sighs. "Cain can wait. Come watch the video, then you can go back to texting him."

Anna sends him a glare, but makes no move to join them.

Lucifer stands up and walks over to her, dragging her chair over into the living room. Anna doesn't bother protesting, instead just picking up her legs and enjoying the ride — or enjoying it as much as she can enjoy anything at the moment. Content, Lucifer takes a seat on the floor again, sitting between Claire and Michael.

Castiel pulls out his phone again to scroll through Instagram. He's turned notifications off, thankfully, because it seems there are about a hundred people live right now, and he would have had to go through that many notifications from that.

He takes a picture of the television monitor, still open to the VEVO channel, and posts it on his "fan account" with the caption, "New music video, 8:29 central (so, like, five minutes, give or take.) I'll be on for a while afterwards, so be sure to tell me what you think!" He posts a more professional version of this on his other Instagram account. It's a picture from his album cover photoshoot, but not the photo he's using as the cover. Written on it is, "9:29 EST." It's simple, but he knows people will get the point. He doesn't bother giving it a caption. If people want more details, they can follow his other account.

He switches back to his other account to check the comments on his post while they wait for the video to go up. It's an overwhelmingly positive response that he adores.

"I CANT WAIT!"

"Ready to break some more records?"

What records does he even have? He knows he has some, but they get broken too often that he's decided to stop caring.

"IM LIVESTREAMING MY REACTION COME WATCH CASTIEL!"

"I've been very impatiently waiting for this moment for the last week and it's finally here!"

"Whatcha doing?" Dean asks, trying to get a good look at the phone.

"Instagram," Castiel replies, showing him the screen. "I like this. People are actually nice to me."

But that doesn't last long. He stumbles on a comment that says, "Fucking gay gtfo."

"And now is the time to use that block button," Dean tells him.

Castiel hesitates, then nods. "Yeah, guess so." He taps the user and, after a brief pause, blocks them. No going back now. He's officially created a blocking page. It'll probably drag in some people who want to get blocked, but after a month, no one is going to care, and he'll be able to block without a problem.

"It's up!" Lucifer yells, immediately starting the video before quickly sitting down again. Castiel hadn't even noticed him get up. There was barely enough time to read the name "Fallen Angel" before Lucifer put it in full screen.

The video starts with some dramatic music as the camera pans around a dark alley, where Castiel's name and the name of the director make a cameo on the walls. After about ten seconds, the camera finally finds Castiel, and the music changes to what he thinks of as what a rebellious teenager's theme song would be, just as he starts singing some badass lyrics that the author didn't feel like writing.

"Dude," Claire breathes, looking over at him. "You look amazing in leather."

Castiel chuckles. He will admit, that jacket doesn't look too shabby on him. He's never been so glad to keep his set clothes as he was with this video.

In the video, he's wearing a $5,000 leather jacket, open a little bit more than natural, and no shirt underneath — which was definitely not his choice. He's not sure exactly who decided that, but when the director, Joseph Kahn, brought it up, Castiel knew immediately where it came from. It's how he gets the teenage girls to watch — and, of course, the gay guys, and he's got a lot of gay boys in his fandom. It's the same reason his hair is such a mess. Apparently, sex hair equals sex appeal.

"So this is... different," Lucifer remarks, choosing his words carefully.

"Lil bit," Castiel replies, which is a huge understatement.

"I love it," Dean murmurs.

"So far," Castiel mutters under his breath, softly enough that no one hears him.

The music video is pretty cool, in his opinion. He got to fake ride a motorcycle, wear a cool but impractical leather jacket, and be dramatic and rebellious instead of the traditional sad or hopeful tones of his music.

The song was even more fun to write and sing. It's entirely about how he's sick of being the sweet and innocent little angel in a world where the most successful people are the ones who cause the most drama. There are quite a few feminine pronouns in there; digs at Bela Talbot were incredibly easy to make. It was almost hard to stop writing it once he got the ball rolling. And who knows. Maybe one day the author will have this same inspiration and actually write the damn thing.

As the video comes to a close, Castiel opens Twitter. This is the beginnings of the part he's sure people aren't going to like. He screenshots the hashtag trending at number three already — #FallenAngelMusicVideo — and searches up Bela Talbot's Twitter to begin scrolling through for tweets that are obviously about him. It's not too hard — she just subtweeted him this morning.

"So-called 'stan Twitter' is up in arms just because I'm stating facts. It's ridiculous."

Castiel pauses for a moment, thinking, then types, "Or maybe they're upset because you're trying to pretend you're anywhere near my level instead of just another one hit wonder. Pick your battles wisely, because you're not gonna win this one." He hesitates before sending it, because it's mean, and he's not mean, and this is not okay. Unfortunately, nothing he's doing is okay. Not for a while. So, tweet.

"Whoop, here we go again. Everyone's least favorite drag queen's one day of relevancy."

Again, Castiel has to think about it a moment before saying, "Oh, sweetie, I could leave for five years and still be more relevant than you. Still rock a dress better, too." And post.

"Wait, so what exactly was that?" Lucifer asks him.

"My new music video," Castiel replies vaguely, because there's no good answer to that.

"Are you sure that was you, though?" Lucifer asks. "Absolutely positive?"

"Mm hmm," Castiel replies, his attention mostly on his phone.

"Like, you wrote it and sang it and starred in the video? The whole nine?"

"Yep," Castiel replies. Ooh, another tweet about him from two days ago.

"Some people need to learn when they're no longer relevant. 18 months and the world kept turning. Should've stayed gone. No one would have noticed."

Castiel replies to this with a screenshot of the trending hashtags and, "Tell you what. When you can get your video trending after less than five minutes, we'll talk. But we both know you'll never have the fanbase for that."

"This is my new favorite song," Claire announces. "Dude, you dragged that bitch! And the outfit! I need a poster of that in my room forever!" she laughs.

"There's one on my website," Castiel tells her. "Only, like, ten bucks."

"Which is ten bucks more than I'm willing to spend," Claire adds. "You should hook me up with one."

"If you actually want one, then sure, I'll get you a poster," Castiel tells her.

"No, that would be weird," Claire says. "Tempting, but weird."

"Tell me about it," he mutters. It's definitely weird to see his face in anything but the mirror, but he feels like he sees it everywhere, whether it's on tv, or fans' shirts, or there's some of his merchandise at a store.

He finds another tweet from Bela from Monday, reading, "Twitter is gonna be so toxic next Saturday - more so than usual."

Castiel responds to it with, "You could've fixed that problem by not logging on today."

"Anna, were you even watching?" Lucifer asks.

"Nope," she replies.

"But it was awesome!" Lucifer gushes, though his facial expressions as he watched it said otherwise. "Way out of the ordinary and Castiel slayed it and you need to watch it!"

"Not happening," Anna says. "It was bad enough I had to listen to the song."

Castiel rolls his eyes. Well, this is a nice birthday party.

"Okay, that was rude and uncalled for," Lucifer says, taking the roll of the father for a few moments. "Apologize to Cassie."

"Luce, it's fine," Castiel assures him, mostly to avoid making a scene.

"No, it's not," Lucifer protests. "Anna, ap—"

"I can assure you that that will never happen," she says.

"I can assure you that if you don't, you won't see your phone for a very long time," Lucifer replies.

"I'll buy a new one," she says defiantly.

"I'll cancel your credit card."

"I have cash."

"I'll —"

"Stop talking?" Castiel finishes for him. "Seriously, chill. It's fine."

"See, Castiel is fine with it," Anna says victoriously.

"Okay, but I'm not," Lucifer replies.

"That's okay, because I honestly don't care," Anna tells him.

"Can't we all just get along?" Gabriel whines. "It's Castiel's birthday, for god's sake! Let's celebrate! Time for presents? I think it's time for presents."

"Or we could call it a night and go home," Anna suggests.

"If you wanna go home, go ahead," Castiel says. "No one's stopping you. I'll see you later?"

"No, unfortunately, someone is stopping me," she says with a pointed glare at Lucifer, making it very clear that she would rather be anywhere but here.

"Why would you wanna leave, anyway?" Gabriel asks. "There's nothing to do back home. Plus, like, Castiel is your brother, and it's his birthday, so, party!"

Anna scoffs. "If that's how it works in the little magical candyland in your mind, then sure, keep telling yourself that."

"What do you mean?" Gabriel asks, puzzled.

"What do you think I mean?" she snaps. "Yeah, sure, maybe Castiel is my brother, but that's about it. When was the last time he came to one of my birthday parties?"

No one actually knows the answer, and suddenly, Castiel finds everyone looking at him, waiting for him to reply.

"It, uh..." Castiel sighs. "Five years ago. But it's not that I didn't want to be there. I was just busy, you know?"

"Because that's always when you scheduled your tours," she finishes. "Mm hmm. Trust me, I know. But unfortunately, the 'I have other plans' excuse is not all inclusive, so instead of hanging out with my boyfriend, I'm stuck here celebrating the birthday of someone I don't even know."

Castiel tilts his head in confusion. "What are you talking about? You know me. I'm your brother. We literally grew up in the same house."

"And you never left your room," Anna reminds him. "Not until you got the music gig, and then you spent more time recording or filming or whatever than you did in Sioux Falls, and you and I still never got to talk. So no, Castiel, I don't know you. I don't even almost know you like all your super-fans. And people ask me about you all the damn time, when they're probably more qualified to answer their question than I am, because the only thing our 'relationship' did for me is get me a bunch of dick picks that I never wanted and a bunch of Instagram comments I'll just delete."

"Anna —" Castiel begins, though he's not sure what he's going to say. An apology, maybe? A promise to make things better? It doesn't matter, though, because Anna interrupts him.

"Oh, no, but here's my favorite part," she says, clearly meaning it's not her favorite at all. "Because you didn't like Crowley, no one likes Cain, so while you're living out your fairytale romance with Dean over there, I can't even mention my boyfriend — not that you would know that, of course, because you're never home."

There are so many things Castiel should say to this rant, but he can't think of a single one.

He sighs. "What do you want me to do? Stop making music so I can stay at my old house with you guys all the time?"

"No, because at this point, there's nothing you can do but stay the hell away. You've already ruined my life. I don't want you making things worse."

"How have I ruined your life?" If he's never here, he can't really do much to her, can he?

"Because I'm not my own person anymore. Not since sixth grade. From now until I die, I will always be 'Castiel Novak's little sister.' You think you have it bad? There are people who hate me because of someone I barely know. So, sorry if I'd rather spend my night with my boyfriend."

Castiel doesn't say anything for a moment. He wants to do something to make it up to her, but there's really nothing he can do, besides just leaving her alone like she wants him to.

Finally, he says, "Alright, well, I'm glad you told me that. If you want to leave, go ahead. I'll make sure Lucifer doesn't get mad. You can go hang out with Cain or whatever. Okay?" He gives her a smile, but it's forced.

She just look at him as if measuring his sincerity, then gets up and walks away without another word.

Castiel sighs and rests his head in his hands. So Michael and Samandriel can't carry out a civilized conversation, Anna hates him, and neither Lucifer nor Michael have any authority when it comes to keeping the house in order. Basically, his family is falling apart. Well, happy freaking birthday to him. But hey, at least he and Dean are still together. You never know with these fifty chapter milestones.

A/N: So this was not supposed to be 4.5 chapters in one but whatever.

First of all, Taylor Swift's new album is amazing and stan Twitter is shook because they were so sure she was gonna flop. Y'all should buy it.

Second, I know Michael seems like a sociopath but if I ever write another argument about immigration, you'll actually see his reasoning, even if you don't agree.

But now for the real reason I have an author's note here. This is the 250th chapter of this "series." You guys have endured what's probably more than 250,000 words of this crap, and I just want to thank you, because reading these comments and looking at votes and reads and seeing people actually like the randomness that is my mind is amazing. I love you guys! <3