Castiel posts a picture on his fan Instagram account later that day, so the entire fandom can see Dean's excitement over "his" Grammy. He captions it as, "Throwback to when Dean Winchester won a Grammy in 2000never." It's a boring caption, but it's better than none. He tags his boyfriend as well, so people can check out his account.

He heads over to Twitter to link the post, mostly because he wants to see if anyone is going to point out how Dean has to be in Massachusetts by the end of the week, and coming to New York for these three days was fairly stupid, and also partially because he feels bad because he never posts anything positive on Twitter anymore.

It's on Twitter where he sees that Mike Pence just announced that he's running for the republican presidential nomination. There's nearly eighteen months until the election, but he's not the first to announce he's running — Castiel is vaguely aware that Elizabeth Warren declared her bid for the democratic presidential nomination about a week ago.

It's no surprise that it's Samandriel who tweeted this. He seems to have become much more politically involved since starting college a couple years ago. He definitely isn't happy about Pence running, but that's probably the common reaction. Castiel has to admit, Donald Trump's "joke" about Pence wanting to hang all the gays has him a bit worried about his future if the guy wins.

Castiel has been trying to stay out of the political world online, which he knows pisses some people off, but they'd be upset if he did talk politics, too, so it doesn't really matter too much. By his usual logic, he would ignore a tweet like this, but he decides to reply, just because it's Samandriel.

All he says is, "The GOP is setting themselves up for failure. Again." They really haven't been on their A game lately. Their nominations typically suck, but they've been exceptionally bad since Donald Trump ran.

Castiel searches up specific names of people who he knows like to pick on him, going through the usual offenders' recent tweets for something to respond to. He starts off with Bart Baker, the man who makes stupid YouTube parodies of all of his songs and music videos, pretending to be Castiel but turning the homosexual up to a thousand.

Sure enough, the most recent tweet is, "Almost done with @CastielNovak's Fallen Angel parody video. Expect it tomorrow."

Castiel quickly types out a response of, "Awesome! Can you make this one good? I know it's going to be hard with your track record, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then." He's actually starting to enjoy this. Being an asshole is surprisingly freeing.

He scrolls back to when he released the song, and soon after the video was posted, Bart tweeted, "I don't quite know how to make Fallen Angel gay."

Castiel replies to that with, "Just do what you always do. Write some bullshit lyrics and hope the overuse of rainbows makes up for it."

He moves on to finding another tweet about him. Fortunately, it ends up being the last one. He's sure there was some remark when Castiel cryptically hinted at a new song, but he doesn't want to go back that far, so he stops there. Two is enough.

He can't help but wonder how many people will see his tweets and look up Bart Baker's parodies. Enough to make him a good deal of money, probably. Really, Castiel is doing him a favor. Free publicity isn't easy to find.

Next is Bela Talbot. He starts with the most recent tweets, not starting any battles over tweets not directed towards him. That's the little bit of dignity he's not going to lose. He does find one new one, this one from yesterday, the day after his song came out and he went all-out douche.

"America's sweetheart's not so sweet now."

Castiel replies to that, after much deliberation in an attempt to perfect his response, "America's sweetheart's just putting you in your place. When they say 'pick on someone your own size,' they don't mean 'go pick a fight with someone way bigger.'"

He has to check the tweets he responded to just after the single release, which he probably should have done sooner, but he hasn't felt the motivation to check Twitter until now.

The first Twitter replies strand goes like so:

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

"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."

"Aww, it's cute that you think you're still popular. You're about a year late on that one."

Castiel scoffs. Did this bitch just?

"Sweetie, we have the same number of # 1s from the last twelve months and I was on break for 11 of them. Maybe I'm not still popular, but I'm still more popular than you."

He moves on to the only other tweet he's going to look at, also from Bela. The tweet chain goes:

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

"Oh, sweetie, I could leave for five years and still be more relevant than you. Still rock a dress better, too."

"Probably not something to brag about."

Castiel can only imagine she's talking about the dress comment, so he replies, "Welcome to 2023. No more gender stereotypes. Get with the times." That's actually shockingly similar to what he would have said before he started picking on people.

Deciding not to be a douche anymore, he switches back to his conversation with Samandriel about politics. A few minutes ago, he had replied, "Big surprise. Not. But if it comes down to Pence and Hassan, I think we both know someone who's going to pick Pence."

Castiel sighs. That was so obviously a jab at Michael. Fortunately, Michael doesn't talk about politics in public often if ever, so the media won't pick up on that. Castiel decides to keep Michael's name out of his response, hoping Samandriel will play along and keep his identity secret.

"I doubt it. He has too many ties to the LGBT+ community to do that. But let's be real, what are the odds of this asshat making it past the primaries?"

Michael may have made a very sudden switch to the conservative side last year, but he's better than that, at least. He wouldn't vote for the homophobe willing to send gays through shock therapy. Unfortunately, a lot of people would choose that over a democrat, so if he makes it past the primaries... Well, Castiel is fucked.

"Oh, cool, I found you."

Castiel looks up to see Dean in the doorway. He walks over and joins the younger boy on his bed.

"Did you get lost?" Castiel asks teasingly.

"Maybe," Dean admits, then adds quickly, "But you can't prove that."

Castiel laughs. "Well, I'm glad you made it, at least. I was getting lonely."

"Then what are you gonna do when I'm gone?" Dean asks, not in the light, fluffy way Castiel was talking, but more serious and genuinely curious. "I mean, you're gonna be here for weeks at a time. Doesn't that get lonely?"

Castiel shrugs. "I don't know. A little, maybe, but it's fine. I work better when I'm alone. Plus, if I ever get lonely, I can just go outside and the paps will find me real quick." It's a gift and a curse. Except it's not a gift at all and it's just a curse.

"You know, you could come to Massachuettes with me," Dean tells him. "The offer still stands."

Castiel sighs. "No, I really can't. I have a job to do. As much as I wish I could just go hang with you, I do have to do something productive, and I work better on my own schedule. I'll definitely go watch some of your games, though."

"I'm holding you to that," Dean tells him. "I don't care how sick of sports you are. I better see you at at least one of my games. And give me some sort of heads up, too, so I can make sure we win."

"Will do," Castiel replies, and he means it. Things can get pretty messed up when he's living alone, but he'll force himself to go to at least one Patriots game, even if he really doesn't want to when the time comes. It's the least he can do, right?