Fame Crazy (Sequel to Strings Attached)

Chapter 170

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."