Fame Crazy (Sequel to Strings Attached)

Chapter 81

"Misha?"

Castiel facepalms.

Lucifer looks over at him apologetically. "Again I say, this isn't my thing, so... sorry?"

"Nah, it's fine." He's kind of decent looking now. He hopefully won't scar little children for life. "Misha's my dog."

"You have a dog?" Jody repeats.

"Yeah. He broke into my house and Lucifer guilted me into keeping him. I have a picture on my phone if you want to see why I haven't really publicized him."

"Well, now I'm curious," she replies.

Castiel pulls out his phone from his trench coat pocket, and the crowd whines. As he searches for a picture, he adds, "I'll post a picture of him on Instagram for you guys. How about that?" The audience cheers in agreement. He finds a newish picture of the dog and shows it to Jody, who gapes at it for a moment.

"Um..."

"Adorable, right?" Lucifer says excitedly.

"Um..."

"He's not, I know," Castiel says. "He looked worse when I first found him, believe it or not. But he's really sweet and doesn't seem to mind traveling a lot. Here, I'll post it now for everyone else before I forget." He quickly posts the picture on Instagram, the caption simply reading "My doge, Misha."

"So yeah. That's my dog," he says. "He came from a rough place, but he's still fighting every day, and I think that's really admirable. My dog's a better role model that me," he jokes, and the audience laughs.

"Alright, I have a question for you," Jody says to Castiel when people calm down. "Now, obviously, you don't have to answer if you don't feel comfortable, but —"

"Is this going to be a thing now?" Castiel asks, knowing this is because of the scene with Lilith. "If you're worried I'm going to walk out, don't be. I like you and the show too much for that."

"Well, I just wanted to make sure," she replies. "So, if you don't want to answer, I totally get it, but I figured it could be a nice chance to clear things up if you want to. I'm sure you've heard the rumors going around that you tried to kill yourself. Comments?"

"Yeah, actually, a few," he replies, casually removing his trench coat and revealing his suit jacket. "I don't know where that came from, but I've seen it quite a bit on Twitter and in headlines. I don't know if people assumed the worst after the video my breakup with Dean went viral or what, but I've been trying to figure out how I could possibly respond to something like that."

He knows exactly what to say to deflect that accusation, but he makes a split second decision and takes off his suit jacket, rolling up his sleeve slightly to show the end of the cut he made all those months ago. It's healed quite a bit, but it's definitely still there.

He hears the collective gasp of the audience, and he tries to ignore it. He knows that's not what they were expecting; Jody's face is proof of that.

Lucifer elbows him in the ribs. "What are you doing?" he hisses. "Are you insane?"

"Yes, I am," he replies, just as quietly. He slides his sleeve down and puts his suit jacket and trench coat back on as he talks. "Obviously, I could have just denied it and no one but Lucifer would know, but I'm sick of this, and if you don't mind, I have a little rant that I haven't prepared at all and had no intention of giving until about ten seconds ago.

"I've been bullied my entire life, to the point where I wouldn't even talk to my siblings for years. For all the crap that anti bullying assemblies get, I think they have a good goal, because if it wasn't for my brother Gabriel, none of you would know my name, because he saved my life six years ago when I tried to kill myself for the first time.

"What people always seem to forget is that celebrities are people too. There's a reason people like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift aren't on Twitter much if it all, and why I'll stay offline for weeks at a time. We're easy targets for cyber bullies, trolls. But after five years of trying to put up with this gracefully, I feel like I owe it to my fellow celebrity friends to say something about this.

"We're people too. We have feelings too. Making fun of celebrities is still bullying, and you never know what effect that can have on them. I'm not expecting to change the world with this, and I'm sure I'm going to get twenty billion people tweeting at me that this is the definition of first world problems and telling me to kill myself anyway, but I just had to get that out there. Anyways, yeah. Just think about what you're saying before you say it."

There's a stunned silence after that. It's Lucifer who breaks the silence.

"Random dancing!" he yells like he's in iCarly, then starts spastically dancing around. His randomness seems to bring everyone back to the good time they had been having. Lucifer's weirdness seems to do that a lot. Castiel just hopes he never loses that sense of humor.