Fame Crazy (Sequel to Strings Attached)

Chapter 48

"Hey, Cas." Dean's voice wakes him from his nightmare, along with the gentle shaking. "Cas, wake up."

He sits up quickly, placing a hand over his racing heart for a moment, for confirmation that it's still beating if nothing else.

"You okay?" Dean asks softly.

"Yeah," Castiel breathes. "Just a nightmare."

"What was it about?"

"Nothing," he says quickly, then clarifies, "It's, uh, it's stupid now that I'm awake."

"Ah."

"Ooh, Castiel, here's your phone back," Lucifer says, handing it to his brother.
The first thing Castiel does it check the time. It's been less than an hour since he fell asleep. He thought it was longer. The second thing he does is ask, "Why did you have my phone?"

"No reason," Lucifer replies in a way that implies there was definitely a reason.

"Lucifer, what did you do?"

Lucifer "coughs," which is really him saying "Instagram." Castiel cocks his head in confusion and opens the app up to see that he has a billion likes (not literally, of course), which is normal after he posts something, but he's been inactive on app for about a month. That can only mean one thing...

"What did you post?"

"What? I didn't post anything!" Lucifer replies, making his lie blatantly obvious.

Castiel goes to his profile and looks at his most recent post, which is a picture of him sleeping on Dean. He sighs and checks the caption. This could be bad.

"Tired Cassie using his friend as a pillow in front of the campfire. — Lucifer."

Well, at least he specified that Dean's just a friend, and that it wasn't Castiel who posted it. Sure, only the latter is true, but they don't have to know that.

"You know, it's generally considered polite to ask before posting a picture for fifteen million people to see," Castiel remarks as he scrolls down to the responses. It's mostly full of comments like "They're so cute!", "Future couple of the year!", and "Should be Harry Styles," as well as the typical "Dad" comments. Anything negative — which is mostly stupid comments like "Gay," are immediately attacked by his fans.

"I also shared it on Facebook," Lucifer adds. "But in my defense, it's a really cute picture."

"It's only cute because you know we're dating."

"No, it's just cute."

"He's right," Dean agrees. "You look adorable. Well, more so than usual, because you're always adorable." He presses a kiss to his boyfriend's cheek.

"I ship it," Lucifer whispers loudly.

"I ship it, too," Dean tells him.

"I agree," Castiel adds. "Destiel is very ship worthy within these two families, but I told you, I don't want it in the public eye."

"I know, I know. That's why I said 'friend,' not boyfriend."

"But rumors start at the drop of a hat," Castiel reminds him. "I won't take it down, but no more."

"Why not?" Lucifer whines. "You can have guy friends! I mean, the only two girls you ever hang out with are Claire and Anna anyway — and Charlie, but you never see her anymore. No one says you're dating Garth, or Harry, or Ed, and you take selfies together every time you see them."

"I don't care. I'm the one with the fanbase, and I say no more," Castiel snaps.

"Fine, fine," Lucifer backtracks quickly. "That's totally fine. No more pictures. Got it."

"I think you're getting a little worked up over this," Dean says cautiously.

"I think you shouldn't judge since your career doesn't ride on other people's opinions," Castiel snaps.

"Yeah, and I get that, but why are you expecting a negative reaction? I mean, playing with the Patriots isn't doing me any favors, but no one is going to hate us because they don't like my sports team."

"No, that's not it, it's... You know what? I don't owe you an explanation."

"Well, no, but it does involve me, so I feel like I should at least get to know. If you don't want other people to know about us, I won't push, but I'd like to know why."

"It's nothing. Never mind."

"Cas..."

"I said 'never mind,'" Castiel snaps.

"Right, 'kay, got it. Sorry," Dean mutters. "Hey, want some chocolate?" He asks quickly, holding out a Hershey bar to Castiel.

"Um... Sure?" Castiel takes it, pulls the wrapper off, and takes a bite.

"Dude! What are you doing?" Lucifer demands.

"I'm eating a chocolate bar...?"

"You're eating it wrong!" Lucifer takes a chocolate bar for himself to show how he's actually supposed to eat it. "See? You break off the rows of rectangles..." He snaps the bar into four rows of three. "And then you snap the rows into pieces..." He snaps them into the twelve pieces the bar is meant to be eaten in. "And then you either eat half a piece with each bite to savor it." He bites off half a piece, and pauses to finish eating before finishing, "Or, if you have as many chocolate bars as we do, you plop a bunch into your mouth at once." He puts what has to be at least five pieces of chocolate into his mouth at once, which results in a very hard time chewing but earns a laugh from everyone else.

"I think I'll do it the first way..." Castiel says uncertainly, snapping the tiny rectangles off and eating it like that.

Lucifer gives him a thumbs up and says something that might be "Nice choice," but is hard to make out with all the chocolate in his mouth.

And that's essentially how they spend the next two hours: chilling around the fire and eating marshmallows and chocolate — not s'mores, though, because why add the graham crackers and distract from the flavor when you can eat the plain marshmallows and chocolate?