After his song with Taylor Swift hits number one in over fifty countries, he's rather optimistic about his next song. He only gives his fans a twenty-four hour heads up about it, but he knows it's long enough to get word to spread.

Fans aren't quite sure what's going on with him. After the drastic change between his first single and his recent collab, he's got them confused, to say the least. Hopefully this one will clear things up, because it seems for the most part, people are expecting another snappy song from the new punk!Cas, and that's far from what they're getting.

The author is too lazy to write an entire song, but it's basically about accepting yourself and not trying to be someone you're not just to make other people happy. Maybe the author will write this song someday, but right now, that's all you're getting.

It comes out at 10:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, which is a decent release time in all the time zones in America, and his American fans are really his biggest concern. He loves knowing there are people in other countries who like him and his music, but not enough to take them into consideration for this. He has a much bigger local audience than his international one.

He joins a fan's Instagram livestream while he waits for its release, and he's not surprised to find this fan staring at a computer, waiting for it to start. She's reading something aloud, seemingly tweets about him, not paying her phone any attention, and unlike everyone watching the livestream, she's oblivious to the notification that he joined. He decides to keep commenting until she looks.

"Hi!"

"Are you waiting for the video?"

"So am I."

"I think you're gonna like it."

"Or idk I like it but might just be me."

"Hello?"

"Notice me!"

"Brianna!"

"Notice me senpai!"

"I'm beginning to feel ignored."

"It's like high school all over again."

"Helloooooo?"

"I wish I could scream at you but that only works if you look at the screen."

"I'm genuinely enjoying these tweets though."

"My dog is trying to eat my phone brb."

He drops his phone on the table next to the couch he's sitting on, turning his attention to his dog. He pats the cushion next to him, welcoming Misha to join him, but the dog just sits on the floor, reaching his head towards Castiel as much as his body will allow. Castiel pets him with one hand, grabbing his phone with the other. The girl whose livestream he's watching is freaking out, apparently having realized Castiel was here. He turns the volume up a few bars so he can actually hear what's happening.

"I can't believe that actually happened, oh my god! Is he coming back? He said he's coming back, right?"

Castiel chuckles to himself and types out, "I'm still here. My dog is just an attention whore."

After the short delay while the message gets sent through, it's clear that she sees it, because the worried look is gone, replaced by a huge smile. "Oh my god, Castiel! Hi!"

"Hi, Brianna!" He adds her name because he knows people like screenshotting the the responses he gives them, and it feels more special with a name.

"Hi! Again! Um..." She laughs awkwardly. "There are so many things I want to say to you and I can't think of a single one."

"Then I'm gonna start with, 'I love you hair!!!'" It's nothing super special; it's just long, blond, and seemingly naturally wavy, almost rivaling Blake Lively's hair.

"Oh my god, thank you!" she squeals, a hand instantly going to touch her hair.

"What's the poster in the corner of the screen?" She has a poster of him just behind her, but there's another poster next to it, and it doesn't look familiar, so he either doesn't know all of his own merchandise — which is very possible — or she has other fandoms that he'd like to get a glimpse at.

"Oh!" She pans the camera over slightly to show the entire thing. "It's Sherlock and John from the BBC show Sherlock. Have you seen it? I know you've said you haven't, but it's been a while so I don't know if — sorry, rambling."

"Rambling is fine by me! And no, I've still never seen it, but my brother Lucifer loves it, and I'm beginning to realize his taste in entertainment doesn't completely suck so maybe I'll watch it soon."

"You should!" she tells him excitedly. "It's so good! Except season four. Season four never happened."

Castiel chuckles. "So I've heard. Lowkey want to watch it just because it sucks tbh."

"You really should!" she insists. "It's worth it! I know you're probably super busy but you could watch it all in a weekend if you try."

He can't sit still for that long — not if he's just staring at something. It's one thing to write songs all weekend, and another to start at the television for hours on end.

"Idk maybe I'll buy it on iTunes and watch it between tour stops."

She seems to get really excited at that, which he doesn't understand until she says, "People were saying you weren't going on tour this year, but now that I'm at college and not living with homophobic parents, I can finally go and I was getting worried that there wouldn't be a tour to go to."

"Oh my gosh yaaaayyyyy!!! I've got big plans for this tour, so I hope it doesn't disappoint."

"Oh my god, I'm so excited!" she gushes.

"Me too!" It's true, too. He hasn't been this excited to go on tour since the first time he ever did it.

"You should do an international tour," she tells him. "You have a lot of international fans who keep talking about how left out they are."

"I won't confirm or deny that possibility." Not just because he wants it to be a surprise, but because he doesn't know how international tours work, so he's not sure if it's as simple as it sounds, or how many international stops he can go to, if any.

"So that's a yes?"

"No, it's an, 'I won't confirm or deny that possibility.'"

"So it's a yes," she repeats.

"Is there any point in denying that or are you just going to assume it's a yes and possibly be disappointed depending on whether or not it happens?"

"The second one," she replies. "And it's going to — the video's out!"

She turns her attention to her computer screen, and a few seconds later, he hears the beginning of his newest song. She vlogs her reactions, which are fun to watch.

"This is way different than I was expecting." "I think this one's better than last time." "This is honestly so inspirational!" "I'm gonna keep replaying this one verse over and over again." "I can feel the emotion through the speaker." "I feel like the video only has bright colors so you don't realize how sad the bridge actually is."

Apparently, Castiel is giving too much attention to her and not enough to his dog, because Misha starts barking at him, blocking out the noise of the livestream. Castiel sighs and puts the phone in his lap, trying to listen as he pets his dog — or, more accurately, tries to shut his dog up.

Content, he does stop barking, just leaning against Castiel's legs with a satisfied look on his face. Castiel rolls his eyes. What an attention whore. But that's okay, because he's a cute, fluffy attention whore.

He turns his attention back to his phone, where Brianna is talking about the new song and video. "That was way more like the Castiel we know and love. I love how chill the music video was. It kinda explains the song without going along with the song, ya know? And I feel like the entire song can be summed up with the bridge and the whole, 'I can't be who they want and be happy too. Torn between myself and my friends, I don't know who to choose," thing that I probably quoted wrong because I've only heard it once but I want to write that on my wall because I love it and oh my god, that was great!"

Castiel can't help but smile at that. He loves hearing people say they like his songs, because he's always sort of nervous about releasing them. It's like publishing a diary entry for millions of people to see. Fortunately, this seems to be one of his good ones.

"I'm really glad you like it!"

"'Like it'? Bit of an understatement!" she says enthusiastically. "This is easily one of my favorites!"

Castiel sends her a smiley face emoji, followed by a heart emoji. What does it say about him that the red heart is the most used emoji on his emoji keyboard?

The two of them spend another ten minutes on that livestream until Castiel finally excuses himself from the conversation. He checks out his YouTube channel and share the link to the new video on Twitter with the words, "I know I'm late but have you seen the new video?" He screenshots the tweet for Instagram, then posts a normal promo picture on his normal Instagram and that tweet on his fan Instagram account, captioning it, "I was late to my own video release because I'm just that good at time management."

And then, because he likes being extra, he returns to Twitter and tweets out, "I'm going live on Instagram in a minute. Want to join?"

He swaps over to Instagram again, going through comments on his new post and giving out a bunch of likes. After a minute or so, he starts his livestream, assuming he gave Twitter fans enough time to get there.

"Hey, friends!" Castiel greets them. "I'm gonna hold on a minute to make sure everyone who wants to can get here. I'm gonna say a quick little blurb about the new album, so that's gonna be fun, and... yeah. That's pretty much it.

"Okay, so I don't know if you guys have heard, but I just released a new song, and, with that, an album name. I'm calling this album 'Playing the Part.' I know there are probably a bunch of people out there who are already preparing their intricate conspiracy theories about what that could possibly mean and how it could translate to my involvement in the Illuminati, so I'm just gonna stop you right there and tell you what this album is actually about.

"If you guys know me, you probably know that I like to write songs about my life and my feeling and experiences, but I never want it to be so much about me that no one else can relate to what I'm saying. I may write them about my life, but you make them about your own.

"Now, I know I'm not the only one who constantly feels like people expect so much from them. Not just that, but they all expect different things from you. So, you try to be everything people want you to be, and you try to make everyone happy, and eventually, you find yourself trying to be so many different people that you lose who you actually are.

"That's what this album is about. It's about trying to be everyone and everything and 'playing the part' of all these different versions of yourself until you finally break. But it's not so much breaking as it is fixing yourself, but this time, it's not fixing yourself into who everyone wants you to be; it's fixing yourself into who you really are, and ignoring anyone who tells you to change, because you know you're good enough, regardless of what anyone else says."

Misha suddenly starts barking again, and Castiel groans in frustration.

"Misha, shush."

Misha does not, in fact, shush.

Castiel rolls his eyes, saying to the camera, "Sorry, my dog sucks. I just had this really great train of thought going on, too, and now I forget where I was going with that. Moral of the story: don't get a dog. Bye!"

With that, he ends the livestream, turning his attention to his very annoying pupper.