It's about half an hour later when Michael leaves, explaining that he has to be at the hospital early the next morning and he's probably been around too long as it is. It's not too long afterwards that everyone else leaves, and Castiel and Dean are left alone once again. They're snuggled up together on the couch, Castiel's head resting on his boyfriend's chest.

"So, how was your birthday?" Dean asks him.

"Awesome," Castiel replies. "I'm gonna see Bon Jovi."

"Yes, you are," Dean agrees.

"But, like, I'm gonna see Bon Jovi," Castiel repeats. "How cool is that?"

"Pretty freaking cool, huh?"

"Mm," Castiel agrees. "I'm actually gonna see Bon Jovi. Like, in person. With my own eyes. This is going to be a thing. I am going to see Bon Jovi."

Dean chuckles. "You don't sound like you're looking forward to it at all," he jokes.

"But I'm gonna see Bon Jovi," Castiel repeats, still trying to wrap his head around this. It's something he's been wanting to do for years, and it's actually happening. "No, even better, we're gonna see Bon Jovi!"

"You're welcome to take someone else, by the way," Dean tells him. "I just didn't want you to have to go alone."

"But you're coming, whether you want to or not," Castiel tells him. "It's gonna be the best night ever."

"Any night with you is the best night," Dean replies, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

Castiel smiles to himself. How did he get this lucky in the ways of boyfriends?

~~

Castiel takes a very close picture of his pants just for a lack background and posts it on his Instagram story, writing on it, "Okay, I'm actually going to start checking out your posts now. I got a little distracted with birthday stuff. Tell me what you think about the new song." He adds a smiley face emoji to the end of it, but deletes it before he posts it. Smiley faces don't fit with his new theme.

His feed is full of pictures from his video, screenshots of his tweets to Bela, and selfies and videos of people freaking out over the new music video. He can only imagine what the reaction is going to be, and he just has to pray no one is "unstanning" because of it.

The first post is a screenshot of the very beginning of the video, with the caption, "HOLY SH*T DID HE JUST?!" which Castiel gives a like before moving on.

The next is a picture of the end of the music video, where he's "driving" a motorcycle out of view, and the caption reads, "HE DID THAT." Castiel has never really understood where that comes from because of course he just did that, but he's pretty sure it's a compliment.

The next post is screenshots of all his replies to Bela's tweets, and the caption says, "YESSS! Castiel finally standing up for himself!"

The next is just a picture of him in a random part of the video, a closeup of his face, and the caption just says, "His hair omg!" to which Castiel comments, "I'm hoping this is a good omg...?" He saves the post so he can check out the reply later.

The next is Castiel's most recent reply to Bela's tweet, and the caption says, "If this is going to be his new thing, I am so down for this."

He finally finds the first negative one, which has a picture of the music video with the caption, "Before you guys attack, I mean this is the nicest way possible, but I don't really like this new Castiel. The thing he's most well known for it staying out of all the drama and just being a perfect lil angel, and it looks like that's gone. I don't know, maybe I'm just overreacting, but I wish he would have thought twice about this."

Interested in how this is going over, he checks the comments on this post, wondering how many people agree.

The first response says, "I see where you're coming from, but all he did was defend himself from someone who's been harassing him for months. I think it was well deserved."

The original poster replied, "Well deserved, sure, but not well handled."

A third person chimed in here, saying, "It's what everyone else does and they never get crap for it.

The first person had ended the comment strand with, "Yes, but Castiel isn't everyone else. He's Castiel. He's supposed to be the good one."

Scrolling through the rest of the comments, he sees a few people agreeing, but for the most part, people seem to be excited about this sudden change in personality. He can't help but wonder if this is just because they've vowed to support him no matter what, or if they genuinely think this was a good choice.

It's strange to see that nearly every post on his feed is praising this new Castiel. There are a few about how they don't really like it, but almost everyone disagrees that it's great. It's both comforting to know that his fans have is back and disheartening that they're doing exactly what he was hoping they wouldn't. He doesn't want people to cling to him just because they've been a fan for a long time. He wants to know if he's still any good, if he would have made it in the music industry as he is now if he wasn't already a big name. Unfortunately, at this point in the game, everyone seems to have their opinion on him, and very few people are willing to change it.

"Hey, Cas?" Dean says after about half an hour.

"Hmm?"

"What's up with the whole 'Bela Talbot' thing?" he asks. "I thought you were just going to ignore her and hope she goes away."

"I tried that," Castiel replies. "That wasn't working, so I went for the fun approach."

He goes on to explain the whole situation. His album is going to be themed. He cut the track list down to fifteen songs, and each of the first thirteen are a different personality trait. They're things that people accuse him of being, as well as things people want him to be. He started with the "bad boy" song, and for the next few weeks, he's going to follow along with that theme whenever he's in public, or could possibly be seen by anyone but his close friends and family.

Then, in a few weeks, he'll release the fourteenth track on the album, which is essentially about how he could play different parts, and how he's been forced to fit the media's depiction of him, but instead, he just wants to be himself.

The next and final track is the song he sang at the concert in Sioux Falls that he walked off during, partially because he knows the fans love it and keep asking for a studio version, but partially because that's what the album is about. It's about how he just wants to be himself, and that song is an unfiltered version of exactly how he felt, exactly what he did, and really, it's who he is, and he thinks that's the best way to end this type of album.

"So you're going to pretend to be a badass," Dean repeats, because apparently that's all he got out of that whole spiel.

"Pretty much," Castiel replies.

"But... you're not," Dean says, sounding slightly confused. "Like, at all."

"That would be the point," Castiel replies slowly. Did this not make sense? Is no one going to understand? Was this album idea a bad one?

"Well, yeah," Dean says, refilling Castiel's hope again, "but do you even know how to be a badass?"

"Not really," Castiel admits. "But that's fine, because I'm really just trying to be a douche like a lot of other celebrities, so I'll just trash some people online and call it a day."

Dean raises an eyebrow but doesn't question it, instead just saying, "Alright, well, as long as you're still you when you're with me, it's all good."

And now Castiel just has to hope it is all good.