Dean says, "What?" again and makes a grab for the script, but Misha dodges him and keeps reading. "Oh, hey, you ruin Jensen's career," he says. "So that's not happening, I will seriously tie you up first. Virgil gets philosophical at me in an alley. I don't like where this is going...yeah." He lets the script fall into his lap and closes his eyes briefly. "So do you guys know about that thing the demons do, with the goblet filled with blood to make a call?"
"No," Dean says cautiously.
"Virgil's trying it," Misha says. He still sounds good, but he can feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears; it's weird, because all he's done is read about his own death. It's not like it's guaranteed to happen—they've changed things already. But he's quietly terrified, and he thinks the only reason Dean hasn't noticed is because Dean doesn't look for fear on Misha's face, or rather on Castiel's.
"How much blood are we talking?" Dean asks.
"The usual collection method is to slit the donor's throat," Misha says. "Where the donor, in this case, is me." He sits back and sighs. "OK, give me a second, I just need to process this."
"Gimme the pages," Dean says firmly, and Misha rolls his head on the couch-back to look at him. Dean looks wary, but more understanding than Misha would have expected. He's holding out a hand. Misha gives him the script, pleased that his hand isn't shaking. Dean says, "Maybe you should get yourself a drink," and turns to the script, but Misha thinks he's still keeping an eye on him.
Huh. Maybe Dean reads Castiel better than Misha thought.
He doesn't get a drink, just concentrates on his breathing until his heart slows down. He gets himself under control and Dean finishes up the script at about the same time; Dean's been reading to himself, without the running commentary.
"OK," Dean says. "This is actually kind of better than Chuck's stuff, in this at least I don't have to read about Sam's internal guilt or whatever. Virgil's goblet thing works, and me and Sam get the lowdown from a guy who saw him, uh, saw him make the call. Virgil's supposed to go back to where he crossed, this is supposed to happen tomorrow so the day after that, 'at the time of the crossing', and Raphael will pull him back through. He goes and gets guns—very Terminator. He shows up on the set and shoots some people, but Sam and I manage to be there when Raphael does the spell and we get pulled back, but Virgil doesn't." He grins. "Apparently Raphael's got a chick for a vessel now. Dude looks like a lady." He pauses, and looks irritated. "That line's in there. This is like the laundromat thing, makes my head hurt. That's what I would say, except would I have said it if it wasn't in...yeah." He sighs. "And here's the big surprise. The key, it's not important." Misha feels his eyebrows go up. Dean grimaces. "Yep. This whole thing, it's all a big diversion so Cas and Balls can get the weapons while Raphael's chasing after us."
Misha nods slowly. That...actually makes a lot of sense. His agreement seems to make Dean angry, though. "Come on," he says. "This isn't cool! Cas should have told us, we could handle it."
"Castiel is under a lot of stress right now," Misha says carefully. It's dawning on him, for real this time, that all these things he knows? They are actually happening to real people. This man sitting in front of him has been to Hell. And Misha has a few flashes of what Hell is that have caused him his very own nightmares, once or twice. Dean's getting ready to scoff, but Misha doesn't let him. "He probably told Balthazar to ask you to help, and Balthazar decided to just throw you here. Castiel...sometimes has a hard time remembering that his allies don't think about you the way he does."
"As what?" Dean asks dismissively. "As occasionally useful?"
Misha reminds himself firmly that Dean doesn't do this stuff on purpose; this is just how Dean deals with being hurt. "As important," he says. "Something other than pawns to push around."
"Oh, come on," Dean says. His body language has gone stiff and angry, though Misha knows Dean's not angry at him, exactly. "Only time Cas shows up these days is to bitch about something."
"Dean," Misha says, "have you noticed that he always shows up?" Dean opens his mouth, and shuts it again. "He does everything you ask him to. He always comes when you call. He's your friend, Dean, I swear. But right now, his life is purely sucking, OK?"
"Yeah, I sort of figured that out," Dean says; though he sneers it reads as half-hearted at best. "Seeing as he tells us every single time we see him about how his war is the most important thing ever."
"Well it kind of is," Misha says reasonably. "Raphael's a dick, he really will end the world if he wins." He shrugs, because here he's on familiar ground—he keeps reading his lines for Castiel's scenes with Dean and wanting so desperately to explain, even while he knows that Castiel's incapable of explaining things in any way Dean can hear. It's frustrating as hell. "Look. Castiel is fighting a war he's not sure he can win. I'm pretty sure you know how that feels." Dean looks like he wants to say something, but Misha raises one eyebrow and the other man makes a pacifying gesture, if reluctantly. "He got pushed into it. He pretty much got back to Heaven after your last conversation in the Impala and had Raphael present him with an ultimatum. It was help restart the Apocalypse or start a war, and Castiel wasn't willing to help end the world." Misha makes an executive decision to leave out a few things for the moment, for two reasons: one of the conversations he remembers hasn't been in any script yet, so he's not sure it actually happened (sometimes they don't)...and if it did, Dean's going to hit the roof when he hears about it, and Misha frankly wants Sam around for that. "He didn't feel like he could ask you for help—not because you wouldn't have helped him," he adds hastily as Dean opens his mouth to protest. "Because he didn't want to make you feel obliged to break your promise to Sam. He told Sam he'd look out for you."
Dean looks actually touched by that, but he says, "It just bugs me." He says it like it's a huge admission, which Misha supposes it is for him, since it's admitting to an emotion. "He's always acting like talking to m—us is such a huge waste of his time." He shrugs, trying to play it off. "Even when he was looking for God, sometimes he'd just show up and hang out, you know?"
Misha smiles and has to actively stop himself tilting his head to the side. "One, he's scared that if anyone on Raphael's side figures out how much he cares about you—and Sam, too, don't get me wrong—they'll use you against him. So he's trying to stay away. And two, he's afraid that if he lets himself spend as much time with you, and I do mean you, personally, as he wants to, he'll end up losing the war."
Dean looks shocked, and Misha sighs, not bothering to hide it this time. "Dean, have you not figured it out yet? Castiel loves you. And not in the love-for-all-humanity kind of way."
Apparently, that's the wrong thing to say. Dean's face clouds over and his voice goes hard. "OK, that's it. You're full of it, man. I can buy sex, but this? No way." He bolts to his feet and takes a few steps away from the couch, swiping his hand over his face in a very familiar way. Misha's starting to be disturbed by how easy it is to remember that this isn't Jensen, because that gesture is all Dean.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Misha says, more a groan than anything else, and moves as fast as he can; he gets to Dean as the other man is completing his surprised turn and grabs him by the shoulders. "Listen up, Dean Winchester," Misha says, and shakes him slightly to emphasize his point. "It does not matter what you think you're worthy of, OK? Love doesn't depend on you deserving it. If it did, no one would ever fall in love. You don't love Sam because he deserves it, you love him because he's your brother. You don't love Bobby because he knows a lot of lore and helps you out, you love him because he's a cranky old bastard. You don't love Castiel because he's pure and perfect and angelic—you love him because he's him. And he loves you because you're you. And the both of you need to get your heads out of your asses and do something about it, because I will be damned if I'm gonna watch you crash and burn because you can't get your act together!" Dean is staring at him wide-eyed, though Misha's honestly not sure if it's surprise or anger or something else entirely. Misha takes a second to breathe, and then says, more gently, "You don't have to think you're good enough for him. He thinks you are."
"Misha," Dean says, sounding utterly at sea. "You have to be wrong, OK? Cas..."
"How about we talk about something else?" Misha says, letting his hands fall. He takes a step back, to be out of Dean's personal space. "Or we could get some sleep."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Sleep." He manages to chuckle. "I was all set to sleep on fake Sam's couch when you called."
"As far as I'm concerned, you can sleep in the bed," Misha says. "It's a big bed, we don't have to cuddle or anything." He smiles to make it a joke, and he's glad because that's probably what lets Dean smile back and nod. Not that Jensen's couches are bad to sleep on.
Misha doesn't usually wear anything to sleep, but in deference to Dean's delicate sensibilities he gets them both pairs of Jensen's flannel pajama pants. "I'll go over to Jared's with you to get Sam in the morning, so you guys can get your thing at the airport. But I think it would be a bad idea for any of us to go to work. You and Sam don't get to screw up the boys' jobs for them, and in the script Virgil picks me up at the set," he says. Dean still doesn't look convinced, but Misha's confident he can get Sam to agree with him.
They climb in to either side of the bed. Dean drops off almost immediately, probably the soldier-reflex to sleep whenever you get the chance. It takes Misha a little longer, but not much—it's been a long day.
He wakes in the deep of night to movement and garbled words, and realizes it's Dean in the grip of a bad dream. Misha hesitates, because it seems likely Dean will lash out if he's touched, and tries whispering his name. The dream doesn't appear to get better. "Dean, you're safe here," he says, Castiel's voice this time; it seems to help enough that Misha risks touching Dean's arm. A moment later he's being enveloped in Dean's limbs, and the mumbling is dying down.
Misha decides that Dean needs a decent night's sleep more than he needs to not be embarrassed in the morning, and lets himself drift off again.