Dean balks at being in the shower at the same time, which Misha thinks is silly but he's aware Dean's gotten a little skittish so he doesn't press the point. He scrubs off quickly and then cedes the shower to Dean. Misha goes and gets them clothes while Dean splashes around, apparently enchanted with the water pressure.
He picks up his slacks and shirt, but only to put them away; he's pretty sure reminding Dean of Castiel any more than he has to would be a bad plan just now. Instead he goes for his very favorite faded jeans and a bright blue sweater that Jen bought him for his birthday. Dean is a more difficult problem; in the end Misha picks nearly at random from Jen's small store of Dean-clothes, mostly things that have migrated to the apartment through not being taken off at the end of the day's filming. It's about time for the wardrobe-mistress to get on Jen's case about bringing everything back, actually.
The water shuts off as he's getting back, pile of clothes in his arms, and Misha debates with himself for a second before tapping. "I have clothes," he says. There's a pause, and then Dean says, "Yeah, OK, bring them in." Misha suppresses a sigh of relief and hip-checks the door fully open. He carefully directs his gaze no lower than Dean's collar-bone as he deposits the clothes on the counter. "I don't know about you, but I'm starving," he says. "I think there's stuff for an omelet or something, or there are some decent delivery places around." He turns to the mirror and works on making his hair lie flat, to provide contrast with Castiel's permanent bedhead.
"Delivery's great," Dean says. "Whatever you want, I'll eat anything."
From the sound of it he's calmer, which is good, so Misha just says, "How about Indian? Place on the corner does samosas that I would seriously knife fight a man for." Dean makes an affirmative sound as he shimmys into his jeans. "OK. You want anything specific?" His hair's about as good as it's going to get, so he turns to lean on the counter.
"Not tofu," Dean says. "I'll eat it as hot as they make it, so however you like it."
By dint of prodigious effort, Misha does not actually laugh at that, but Dean catches his lips twitching and visibly plays back what he just said. For a second it's not clear which way he's going to go, and then he bursts into laughter himself. "OK," he says after a few seconds. "That sounded way less dirty in my head." He smiles, and Misha's breath catches—it reminds him irresistibly of his favorite picture of Jensen, which is good for the mostly-unzipped black sweatshirt but great for the honest laughter on his face. Misha meets Dean's eyes and smiles back, and all the awkwardness evaporates.
Even in Vancouver there aren't that many people ordering Indian at nearly midnight on a Thursday, so the place promises their food in twenty minutes or less. Misha hangs up and turns back to Dean.
Who is sunk into one of Jensen's leather couches, looking like he's died and gone to heaven. "This is great," he says, when he sees Misha watching. "I guess fake me has good taste."
"I like to think so," Misha says, and Dean rolls his eyes. "In furniture, dude," he says. "But he can't have all good taste if he doesn't like scotch." Misha decides to let that one go.
Dean's near one end of the couch, so Misha sits with his back against the other arm. The seat's wide enough for lotus position, but it occurs to him just in time that Dean might have bad associations with that; it was the way Cas-in-2014 sat. Instead he just stretches out, bending his knees enough not to poke Dean in the legs. "OK, so. How did you guys get here?" he asks, and then, "I mean, it is you guys—you and Sam. Right? I assume if Castiel were here I...wouldn't be." Now that's a disturbing thought. Would he end up a vessel, like Jimmy? (He firmly does not engage the part of his mind that wants to mention that he kind of thinks he was, for a little while there.)
"Yeah, both of us," Dean says, oblivious to Misha's musings. "We were at Bobby's and that dick Balthazar showed up with a song and dance about Raphael chasing Cas to get hold of the locker key." Misha nods; they'd passed it to him at one point during the "joke" earlier in the day. "He—Balthazar—cast a spell and we went through Bobby's window and landed on that creepy set." Misha is a little puzzled by that description until it occurs to him to wonder how he'd feel on a set version of his apartment, or, more to the point, his parents' house.
But that's not such a big deal. What is... "So if you're here, where are Jared and Jensen?" he asks slowly. Dean looks as if that hadn't even occurred to him and says, "I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say Bobby's house." Misha thinks that over and actually feels himself go pale at the implications. How had he not thought about this before? He'd been caught up in his own cleverness for figuring it out, that was how. And then, well, all the blood had been going to the little brain.
Dean is looking a little alarmed. Misha says carefully, "So you're telling me that your best guess is that my friend Jared and my lover Jensen are in your world, walking around looking exactly like Sam and Dean Winchester, public enemies numbers one and two on every monster hitlist."
Dean looks unnerved and says, "Don't, I mean—Bobby won't let anything happen to them, you don't have to worry. Cas too. He'll look out for them."
"If he's not running for his life!" Misha says. "Castiel's hardly even in this episode, because he spends the whole time running from Raphael and Virgil. Seriously, I have like five pages, and most of one is taken up with a description of flashing the wings at Raphael." He runs his hands back through his hair nervously.
"Maybe they aren't there," Dean says. "Maybe me and Sam are possessing them. I mean, when I was in the shower I noticed I'm missing pretty much all my scars. So maybe Jensen's...sleeping. Like Jimmy."
"That's not very fucking reassuring," Misha snaps. He's not actually angry at Dean, but he's scared, and pissed at himself for not having thought to be scared earlier. "Jimmy's dead."
Dean stares at him, and Misha realizes that, no, Castiel never told him that. "When they got blown up at the end of season four," he says. Dean doesn't seem to recognize the reference. "Uh, Raphael. The night Lucifer got loose. Castiel exploded, and when he came back Jimmy was gone." Dean looks startled, and then angry and sad and a little ill.
"This is so weird," he mutters. "How do you even know this stuff?"
Misha says tightly, "I just do. Sometimes I have dreams." He can't stay sitting anymore; Castiel gets quiet when he's worried, holds all the tension in, but Misha's never been like that. He stands and starts pacing.
"Well I haven't exploded," Dean says, clearly trying to be reassuring. "So if Jensen's in here, he's fine."
"Yeah," Misha says. "And if he's not in there, something could be eating him right now."
"Not if they're at Bobby's," Dean says. "He's not gonna let them go actually hunt anything and even we don't usually have things just attack us."
At that, Misha has to stop and breathe carefully for a second. He somehow doubts it'll be useful to ask if Dean has ever watched the damn show, where things "just attack" him and Sam roughly every four episodes. Still, Dean has a point; at least most of the trouble the Winchesters get into is trouble they went looking for. It's not like there's anything he can do about it right now, anyway. "OK," he says, and laces his hands together on the back of his neck. "How are you guys getting back?"
"That was one of the things Balls didn't bother to tell us," Dean says, grimacing. "We're gonna cast his spell again once we have all the stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Bone of a minor saint," Dean says. "Found one of those on EBay. A couple other things, but they're all easy." He eyes Misha for a second. "Dude, you wanna sit down? You're making my feet hurt."
"I pace," Misha says, trying not to sound too irritated. "It makes me feel better. When are you going to have the bone?" He's kind of proud of himself for managing to deliver that sentence without stumbling.
Dean sighs, but answers, "It's supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning. We're going to have to go to the airport to pick it up."
"No, I'll go," Misha says. "My call's later than yours since it's such a Cas-light episode." That thought makes him stop pacing again. "Oh. Oh, they're gonna try to make you guys act."
"…so?" Dean says. "We act all the time."
"No, you improvise all the time," Misha says. "And not on film. You don't know how to hit marks, nothing. There is no way you're gonna pass for Jen in front of a camera, Dean."
"You're saying I can't pretend to be myself," Dean says skeptically.
"I'm saying you can't pretend to be someone else pretending to be you."
Dean looks like he's going to argue more, but Misha forestalls him. "For you it's easy—Jensen gets headaches, and if we don't catch them in time they put him out for a day, day and a half sometimes. We'll have to think something up for Sam. Food poisoning, maybe. It'd be easier if we could get Ginny in on it, but I don't know—"
Dean holds up a hand in a whoa gesture and says, "Ginny?"
"Jared's wife," Misha says. "You know, fake Ruby."
"Yeah, OK, but we have to go to the set," Dean says. "That's where we came through, stands to reason that's where we need to cast the spell to get back."
"But you don't have to do it during the day," Misha says. "I mean, I want to get Jensen back, but I want him to still have a career when he gets here too. You can spend a day sitting around and watching TV—hell, there's all five seasons on DVD in the cabinet over there. They can film around you guys for the day, maybe do my coverage, and then in the evening you and Sam can cast your spell." What he doesn't say is that he's positive Dean won't make it through a day on set without threatening someone, shooting something, or just quitting; the situation is pretty much tailor-made to rub raw every nerve Dean Winchester has. (People telling him what to do, check. Having to do the same thing over and over, check. Not visibly accomplishing anything, check. Thinking about what he was feeling, check. It was a nightmare.) Sam might be better off, if they couldn't come up with a way to get him out of it.
"We can talk about it in the morning," Dean says stubbornly. Misha decides to shelve the argument for now, but he will seriously fake seizures to keep Dean out from in front of the cameras if he has to.
They're bickering over who gets the last samosa when Dean suddenly says, "Who's Virgil?" Misha blinks at the change of topic and Dean elaborates, "You said Cas was running from Raphael and Virgil."
"Oh," Misha says. "Yeah. He's the boogeyman for the episode. 'Weapons Master of Heaven', so he's kind of pissed about Balthazar having stolen all the weapons. He's not on screen much. The idea is, Balthazar gave you guys the key so you could go get the weapons, while he and Castiel lead Raphael on a wild goose chase. The episode's about you two trying to figure out where the locker is that the key opens and get to it without your normal resources."
Dean chews thoughtfully for a second. "But that's not what happened," he points out, waving his piece of naan in illustration. "Balthazar just told us to keep it safe, not use it. And I kinda doubt the stuff's hidden in Bizarro-world."
"Yeah," Misha agrees. "It's weird. I mean, it's pretty obvious that we've got some kind of Chuck-like prophet thing going." (He is just not going to mention that one scene in "Swan Song". He doubts very much that Dean would take kindly to finding out God was there all along, and he really doesn't want to contemplate the idea of Kripke being God.) "Although I think the first version of this script was a lot more meta. Jensen mentioned something about how they wanted Genevieve to come back and play herself, but she wouldn't do it so they had to rework. I hadn't even gotten mine yet…" His eyes meet Dean's and they both have the same idea at the same moment.
Misha gets up and says, "Jen keeps his scripts. Hold on a second." The filing cabinet by the computer desk has drawers that are properly labeled, because Jensen's picky like that, so it's the work of moments to find the script. A note in Jen's square handwriting on the cover sheet says "Too bad—funny". Misha sits on the couch next to Dean and drops the script on the coffee table.
They stare at it for a second, and then Dean turns to the first page. "Oh boy," he says, after reading for a second. "This is…man, this is just creepy. This is exactly what we said, exactly what we did." They read on, Dean making occasional distressed comments.
The first difference hits during the not-joke conversation on the lot. Misha-in-the-script actually uses the phrase "alternate reality". And from there it goes completely off the rails; in the script, Misha doesn't call Jensen and Dean spends the night at Jared's house with Sam.
The next morning, things progress as Sam and Dean were planning before Misha's call: they go to the airport and pick up their package, then to the set, where they're roped into acting. (Misha is gratified to see that it goes exactly as well as he expected, which is to say catastrophically.) They try to cast their spell, and…
"Crap!" Dean exclaims. He throws himself into the embrace of the couch, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. "The spell doesn't work from this side."
"Not a huge surprise," Misha says. He picks up the script. "Oh, crap." Dean's eyes open. "Virgil," Misha says grimly. "Apparently he's coming through too. Oh…oh, but he's powerless here, this is awesome. You and Sam totally kick the crap out of him. Um, Bob and everyone have a conference call about you guys flaking out. Hey, me again, awesome. Come on, I don't tweet that—holy shit."
"What?" Dean asks. Misha looks up at him. "What, Cas?" Dean demands, and then shakes his head. "Sorry. Misha. What?"
"Virgil," Misha says. "Virgil kidnaps me."