Standing Together

Chapter 54

Dean does seem to fix his behavior after that. It takes a few weeks for him to stop moping over the loss of his dad's cassette tapes, but he doesn't snap at Castiel again after that. In fact, if anything, he seems to be nicer to him. He throws in more "I love you"s than ever before, and gives him extra hugs.

But that's not what this chapter's about. No, this chapter starts with Castiel's incredible level of boredom while Dean's off at practice a few weeks later. He's not sure what to do to pass the time. He's already gotten tired of teaching himself piano. He's not very interested in playing guitar at the moment. He's been staring at the ceiling for the last half hour and has yet to have an interesting moment from it. He just needs something to do.

Finally, he decides to check out Twitter, not to see what people are saying about him, but to see what Dean's been up to. Unfortunately, without Twitter on his phone, he can't check the mobile version — not because it's impossible but just because he's too lazy to download the app. Instead, he fires up Dean's computer, which looks like it stepped out of the year 2006, but it still works. It would probably take less time to download the app than it takes to start the computer up, but it's a bit late to figure that out.

Eventually, Castiel manages to log into Twitter, and, as always, the first tweet on his feed is from Lucifer, so he decides to read it.

"PSA: if your music sounds more like pop than a lead Kenny Chesney single, it ain't pop. #StopCallingPopCountryCampaign #ItsANewThjngGoingAround #IStartedItTwoSecondsAgo"

Castiel shakes his head in amusement. Lucifer really cares about his music, doesn't he? It doesn't really matter, though. It's not why he came here. Castiel searches Dean's username, expecting to just find the boy's profile to click on, but it also shows the most popular tweets, and the first one seems a bit out of character.

"Are you actually bragging about tearing down a successful woman?"

Okay, feminist Dean is new. Context must be really important, because this just sounds weird. He goes back to the top of the thread to check it out.

The first tweet, which comes from a Taylor Swift fan account, is a picture of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, with the caption, "This picture has 10 Grammys. They all belong to Taylor."

Ouch.

The next response, which comes from a girl with a picture of Ariana Grande as their profile, says, "Please don't tear down successful women like this. Both queens."

It seems like a sweet message, but the swiftie doesn't seem to agree, because she says, "Am I wrong tho?"

And that's where Dean comes in with his, "Are you actually bragging about tearing down a successful woman?" He's going live to regret that. You really don't want to get involved in these arguments.

The Taylor Swift fan came back with, "Lol what? I'm not even coming for your boyfriend. Castiel's a queen too, so why do you care?"

"Because this type of thing is annoying, and if Taylor Swift is anything like any of the singers I've met, she thinks you're annoying, too."

Damn, Dean, why you gotta expose him like this?

But Dean went on in another tweet after that, saying, "You can't complain about male rappers dominating the charts if you refuse to support the female artists in the business."

It's a bit disappointing to look through the responses to that and see people arguing with him, because really, that makes more sense than the majority of stuff stan Twitter says. It's cute to see that Dean tried, but he should have expected the onslaught of tweets calling him misogynistic for that. People really need to stop throwing that word around so loosely.

Castiel goes to Dean's account to look through his tweets and replies, but after that, all he has is a conversation with Lucifer, starting with Lucifer's response to Dean's first tweet.

"We stan a feminist king."

Dean responded with, "Less feminist and more annoyed, but I do like the king part."

"Feminism comes from being annoyed at how women are treated, Deano. Welcome to the real world."

Dean, being the adorable yet slightly problematic little shit he is, said, "Okay but actually I'm just annoyed at how people treat Cas and that's just morphed into hating how people treat everyone."

Of course, Lucifer would never let go of his chance to make Dean seem better than he is, because he said, "But you're standing up for these talented young women and I think that's awesome."

Dean must know what he's doing, because he said, "Stop trying to make me look like a good person. I'm literally just not."

"Shushles! You are the goodest good person in Goodpersonstown."

"I can't deny that just because I don't know that it means."

"I know you don't :)" Castiel can just imagine Lucifer's self satisfied grin when he said that.

Dean must have been in the middle of a break when this started, because he says a very sudden, "Gtg I'll complain about you later," before disappearing.

Castiel shakes his head in amusement. They're certainly an interesting duo.