Standing Together

Chapter 36

A/N This is an incredibly boring chapter just to set up a future chapter that will hopefully be kinda entertaining maybe

Castiel has a surprisingly productive day. He gets another hour of sleep, feeds the neighbor's cat — subtly hiding from his fans under his new trench coat on the walk over, despite most of them having left — and still has a couple hours to spare.

He plays around with his piano for a little bit, just trying to figure out more chords. After a few minutes, though, he finds himself far too bored to continue. He kind of wants to play a song, but he also wants to stick with chords he knows, and it would be a pain in the ass to find a song with doable chords.

"God, I'm an idiot," Castiel mutters. He could just play his own songs — not with the book his friends got him, but his unreleased songs, so he can pick the chords. That would be interesting.

Castiel dumps all his song notebooks on the floor, leaving them face down so he doesn't know which ones he's looking at. He switches them around a bit, then picks up one at random. His third song notebook. That would be about six years ago, right? Maybe a little longer, all the way back to the start of his career. God, this is going to be cringey. Looking at his old stuff anyways is.

He opens up to a random page, dated in the top right corner. It says it's from February, and Castiel doesn't even have to look at the rest of the page to have the reasonable suspicion that this has something to do with his first Grammy — the anxiety leading up to it, the burst of pride when he won; it was an emotional time, and he must have written at least 50 songs that month, most of which were related to the Grammys in some way.

The nice thing about this one having a date on it is that it means he recorded it, and most songs he's recorded are still on his old iPod touch. He's pretty sure he brought that iPod here with him. He just has to go find it.

It doesn't take long to find his suitcase, the iPod tucked into the front pocket. Castiel grabs both the iPod and its charger, bringing them to the living room to plug it in. It's no surprise that it's out of battery, but it shouldn't take too long to turn back on.

Castiel flips through his notebook while he waits. He actually remembers writing some of these. He may not remember what any of them are supposed to sound like, but he remembers how he felt when he wrote them. They're not very good, but he'd probably say that about all the songs on his earlier albums, and people still seemed to love them.

Castiel pauses as he skims the lyrics of one of them, just a cute song thanking his fans. If he remembers correctly, it almost went on his next album, until he had to cut it because he had too many he liked. It's not a terrible song. It looks a little bit optimistic for him, though, especially given the increasing number of sad songs he's been releasing — his fans seem to like them, and he enjoys writing them. But maybe...

Castiel grabs his old iPod and scrolls through the videos until he finds the recording of this song, the camera face down in the carpet of his bedroom back in Sioux Falls so it just shows a black screen like the rest of them.

It's not bad, though it's a pretty shitty recording of it. He was probably trying to be quiet about it so his siblings wouldn't hear him. He could relearn it, record it a second time. What else is he going to do while Dean's gone, right?

So that's what he does. It takes a shockingly long time to figure it out again — he can play it on guitar fairly easily, but he has to remember how to sing it before he can record it.

He opens his email, attaching the file with the song and a picture of the lyrics before he starts writing the rest of the email. Now he just has to figure out what to say.

He stares blankly at the subject line, and, after a few minutes of thinking, just writes, "Song?" It's such an awkward opener, but he's not sure what else to put.

For the email itself, he drafts it out a few times, trying to find a nice, not-super-weird way to phrase it. After a lot of back and forth, he ends up with:

"I was looking through my old songs and I found this. I don't know how far along you are with your next album, but if it's still in the works and you're looking for another song, you're welcome to do what you'd like with this. If you're not interested, that's completely fine. Just let me know, and I'll see if anyone else wants it."

He sends the email before he can talk himself out of it. He still feels a little awkward about it, but he's not sure why. It doesn't matter, though. He sent it. He can't take it back now.

He decides to go through his other songs and find some to send to other artists — maybe he'll even be responsible for Rihanna's next hit single. The smaller names might be more likely to accept them, though; small-time country artists that dabble in pop like Kelsea Ballerini and Kalie Shorr could use the exposure more than someone like Beyoncé. He'll have to check to see whose emails he has stored.

He doesn't really care if anyone else accepts his songs, though. He just hopes Jack likes the one he's sent. It's cute, optimistic, and sounds like it's right up his alley. With Castiel's name listed in the writing credits, it's sure to be the biggest hit the kid's ever had.