The pride parade isn't supposed to start until one o'clock the next afternoon, but by the time Castiel arrives at noon, there is already what seems to be a thousand people there at least. There are no cars allowed on the street because of the city-approved gathering, but he's far too lazy to walk, so he rides his rainbow skateboard down the street. It was actually really fun to paint it back home, but it's considerably harder to ride.

He manages to make it to the crowd, who all start cheering as he appears. Castiel grins and waves at them. After a minute or so, he tries calming them down, and eventually, people stop screaming.

He had a sound system put together along the entire street, so he can use a microphone to speak to everyone. "Hey, friends, I'm Castiel."

Everyone starts cheering again because that's what large groups of fans do.

"I wasn't really expecting anyone to be here yet, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Does everyone have a rainbow flag? Because there should be a bunch back there, and I have some up here. And since I'm here early for once in my life, how 'bout I try to meet as many of you as possible in the next hour?"

Obviously, the crowd goes wild at the idea, so Castiel walks up to a group of people in the front of the crowd. He chats for a minute, signs some stuff they brought on the off chance that would happen, and signs all the rainbow flags before doing the same with the next group, and the next, and the next.

He stumbles upon a large clump of people whose faces were painted with rainbow face paint, which would have been funny on its own, but it's even better to see that a lot of these people aren't talking to each other, which implies that they came separately. There must be someone here painting faces on the spot.

It takes another few minutes, but he does eventually find this mysterious face painter. With his back to him, Castiel can't see his face, but he can already tell he likes this person, purely because the girl he's with has rainbow hair. Castiel doesn't recognize who they are until the girl turns around, pointing a camera at him. She grins and waves excitedly.

"Look, it's Castiel!" she says, poking the boy next to her.

"I can't just leave half a rainbow."

Castiel chuckles and walks over to them. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Painting rainbows on people's faces," Claire replies. "Also, Lucifer was offended you didn't invite him."

"But I invited myself anyway," Lucifer adds, not turning around. He seems very focused on painting this girl's face. "Hey, Castiel, this is Anna. Not our Anna, obviously. A different Anna."

"Hey," Castiel greets her. "Nice to meet ya."

"You too!" she says excitedly, trying and failing not to change her facial expression so the painted rainbow works.

"Shushles," Lucifer says. "You can fangirl when your rainbow is finished." There's a brief moment of silence before Lucifer adds excitedly, "Ooh, Castiel, guess who else is here!"

"Who?"

"Our lesident, Charlie!"

"What? Where?" Castiel asks, looking around. He didn't even think to invite Charlie, who should have been his first choice.

"I don't know," Claire replies with a shrug. "She disappeared. Probably looking for a hot gay girl."

"Doesn't she have a girlfriend?" Castiel asks, recalling that time Charlie brought a plus-one to his birthday party.

"Oh, yeah, forgot about her." Claire shrugs. "But it never hurts to have a backup plan 'case things go bad."

Castiel scoffs. "That is so not how relationships work."

"It's not?" both Claire and Lucifer say in unison, causing them both to laugh.

Castiel shakes his head at them. "I'm disappointed but not surprised."

Lucifer steps away from the girl whose face he was painting. "And voila. A perfect-ish rainbow!"

They talk to her for a minute or two before making their way up to the front of the pack, with Lucifer and Claire talk to him the entire way.

"You've missed an awesome few months back home," Lucifer tells him.

"Samandriel almost broke his wrist!" Claire adds.

"That was not the awesome part," Lucifer assures him.

"But it was still awesome," Claire says. "We were playing 'the floor is lava' for one of Lucifer's videos — not the boring 2017 one where you just get off the floor for a second but the fun jumping around one — and he tried to do this leap of faith to the couch from a pillow on the other side of the room and he didn't make it and almost died and it was hilarious!"

Castiel can't help but laugh. "Well, I'm kinda glad I missed that."

"And he didn't actually almost die, just as a disclaimer," Lucifer adds. "If he did, I think Michael would have killed me, too."

"You sure about that?" Claire asks. "If it was, say, Anna, then yeah, but Samandriel? Really?"

Lucifer rolls his eyes. "Just 'cause they're on opposite sides of the political spectrum doesn't mean they don't like each other."

"Are you sure?" Claire asks again. "Rumor has it, Samandriel blocked him on Twitter."

"In the words of Taylor Swift," Lucifer says as if he's a profession lecturing a student on life, "'The rumors are terrible and cruel."

Claire just rolls her eyes.

"'But most of them are true,'" Castiel finishes. It's one of the few songs of hers he knows that he's never heard on the radio or searched up because it was nominated for an award. He's actually not quite sure how he does know it.

"Shushles!" Lucifer hushes him. "That's not the point, 'cause this rumor is one of the ones that isn't true." Then, under his breath, he adds, "Isn't it, isn't it, isn't it?" Castiel has patrolled the Twitter universe enough to know that it's from another one of Taylor Swift's songs. Also that part of the song was playing as the author italicized the first "isn't it" and it was impossible not to add.

"Have you asked them?" Claire asks.

"Well, no, but I don't have to, because I know them well enough to know that it's not true," Lucifer replies simply.

Claire starts saying something, but Castiel cuts her off quickly, because he doesn't need the world listening to his family drama.

"Hey, look, it's a Charlie!"

He ushers then over to her, and it only takes her a moment to notice him before she meets them halfway.

"I can't believe you were going to have a pride parade without me!" she whines by way of greeting.

"I know, I know, I suck," Castiel replies. "But you're here anyway, so it's all good. And nice shirt."

Her shirt is proof that diversity makes dad jokes stronger. It says, "les," then shows a picture of a bee, then says, "an," in a fun twist on the word "lesbian." As a bee fan, he really appreciates it.

"Oh, thanks!" she says, beaming. "My girlfriend got it for me."

"You really lucked out with her, then." She really did. Gilda seems so sweet. Castiel doesn't feel like he has to worry about her breaking Charlie's heart at all, and he's just hoping he didn't jinx it.

"I know!"

Castiel glances back at Lucifer and Claire, silently inviting them to join the conversation as he says, "The guy who's supposed to be directing the video today was way too sick to actually do anything, so I've taken it upon myself to put this entire video together myself, which basically means it's a free for all if you guys have any ideas of things you want to see."

"Ooh, me!" Charlie says immediately. "Can we have a giant dance party and do Cotton Eye Joe and the Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle and just jam out?"

Castiel chuckles at the thought of over a thousand people doing the Cupid Shuffle. "Hell yeah, we can."

"You know," Lucifer says, sounding slightly hesitant, almost as if he doesn't know if he's overstepping his bounds by saying this, "if you need any help with this whole video thing, making videos is kinda what I do. I could help film and edit and all that — but only if you want me to. And I've got a pretty good camera, too." He nods towards the camera in Claire's hands at that last part.

Castiel grins. "Yes! That would be awesome! And you can do what Joseph Kahn does and put your name at the beginning of the video do everyone knows that you're actually magic at this type of thing. I can tell you already that this isn't going to be a hit, but there are still going to be millions of people watching it."

"I don't think that warrants a place in the beginning," Lucifer protests.

"Maybe not, but I think it does, so that's happening, no matter what." Castiel smiles at him in a way that says that this is happening, and it's final.

Lucifer shrugs. "'Kay, then make this a good video, because I don't want my name on something that sucks. Deal?"

"Deal."

A/N I finally finished finals (haha pun) (sorry) and second semester starts tomorrow with all new classes, and one of those classes is creative writing, and from what I've gathered, I'm going to have to write 40,000 words by the end of the semester so I might be MIA a bit because I'll have to write another story too and this one will have a deadline so I apologize in advance if this is the case