Work Text:
July, 2019
Misha is kind of a weird dude, and Jensen’s relationship with him is basically built on a foundation of special restaurants and the weird ass meals they have there, so he doesn’t blink when Misha insists they meet at an ice cream shop where all the flavors have obscurely sexual names. Not that Jensen will let on to realizing that until Misha is ready to explode over his non-reaction.
He’s not totally sure why he’s feeling so restless. It's the end of their last Supernatural hiatus, the last time he can look inward and think, I’ll be seeing Dean again soon. It was just…the last, and now he’d seen a rough outline of the last ever script of the last ever episode.
And the first thing he’d thought was, he needed to see Misha.
Misha, who has a go-with-the-flow attitude that Jensen seriously envies, didn’t ask why he’d randomly wanted to hang out a few days before shooting was supposed to begin. He didn’t even bitch that Jensen dragged him up to Vancouver, away from his family, days before he really needed to be here.
Jensen had just needed him, and Misha had come.
And then he’d said, “let’s go to Perverted,” and Jensen had figured, yeah, that sounds fair.
“Why are the cones black?” he asks, staring suspiciously at his Brand Spanking as he twists it around in his hand.
“Aesthetic,” Misha replies promptly, already licking long strokes over his cone choice, Beg for S’more.
“So it’s not gonna be like, anise-flavored or something?” Jensen questions, still deeply suspicious after the time Misha had fed him bull testes.
Misha rolls his eyes. “Just eat the damn cone, Jensen.”
Jensen tentatively touches his tongue to the ice cream and damn, so Misha was right, it was good.
Misha makes a noise and Jensen pauses, looks up, to see him staring, ice cream melting down one side of his hand. “What?”
“That is obscene,” Misha says in a strangled voice. “If I could kiss you in public, I would be.”
“Shut up,” Jensen mutters, the tips of his ears going hot. “This isn’t – this is serious.”
“So you didn’t call me up here for a booty call?” Misha asks, but his eyes are sharp.
“Not this time,” he snarks back before going silent again. Misha lets him, because Misha has always known when to wait him out and when to natter until the cows come home, and Jensen can’t imagine not seeing him almost every day of his life and –
And maybe they were right. Maybe he was too close to this. Maybe the script was good.
“Jen,” Misha prompts quietly, and that’s all he needs.
“They told me the ending today,” he says, staring at his sad, half-finished ice cream cone instead of Misha. “For Dean.”
“I see,” Misha, who’s finished his cone now, leans forward on the metal table they’re sitting at outside the ice cream shop and props his chin on his closed fist. “And how did it make you feel?”
“You’re really an ass, you know that?” Jensen asks, and suddenly his stomach is churning too much to finish the damn sex ice cream. He looks around and spots a trashcan nearby, leaving his seat to toss it. When he returns, Misha isn’t leaning over the table anymore, and his eyes are soft.
“I’m serious,” he says. “How did it make you feel?”
“Confused. I don’t think I like it.” He chews on his lip, pokes a finger through the metal weave of the table. “They said maybe I’m too close to it.”
He looks up, and the corner of Misha’s eyes are tightening in that way they do when he’s indignant. “Bullshit,” he says flatly. “Does ‘too close’ mean embodying the character? Knowing him best?”
“Loving him most, I think.”
“Bullshit,” Misha spits out again. “If you don’t like it, don’t do it.”
Jensen is struck with a sudden thought, something he can’t believe he hadn’t thought about. Obviously he and Jared had a meeting with the writers to hear how the end of Sam and Dean was going to come about (and Jared was overtly ecstatic and weepy with his, bastard) but were they the only ones extended that courtesy, even if apparently they weren’t really expected to weigh in?
“Hey, you know how this is all going to end for Cas?”
There’s a pause from Misha, long enough that Jensen knows the next word out of his mouth is going to be a lie. “No.”
Jensen grins at him. “You happy with it?”
“Exceedingly.”
“You wouldn’t do it if you weren’t?”
“No,” Misha says with such certainty that it brings Jensen up short.
On the surface, Misha seem so easy-going – sometimes Jensen thinks he takes for granted how much Misha cares about Castiel, about the fans. About how much it matters to him to leave something good behind, and to make them all happy. With Jensen, for Dean, he just wants the ending to be right. To show how much he’s grown, how far he’s come. That he’s more than just a soldier, he’s a hero. That he fought for a family and found them, and now he fights out of love for them.
He wants Dean to have what he wants to have. Freedom. His family. The whole world open to him.
Killing him so young, it leaves a bad taste in Jensen’s mouth. Leaving Sam behind feels worse. Sure there’s heaven, and family there waiting for him, but what about everyone else?
He shoots a glance at Misha, who as usual is playing an amazing game of looking totally bored with his surroundings and the struggle Jensen is having across from him. He knows Misha is in tune with every twitch of his face, ready to tear into the emotional conversation again at the slightest shift of his body.
What about Cas?
He doesn’t like this ending. Maybe he’s too close to it, to Dean, but so damn what? Doesn’t mean he can’t call a bad ending when he sees it.
“It’s a bad ending,” he says, tasting the words out loud, testing them.
Misha smiles slightly at him. “You gonna do it?”
Take it or leave it, they’d told him, and Jensen supposes he could leave it. Could end Dean right here and right now, maybe not on Dean’s terms, but on Jensen’s. But then where does that leave the fans? Or Jared and Misha?
Danneel had told him, after he’d texted Misha to come on up and called her, that he should talk to Kripke. And he supposes Kripke would have some insight on the show, on Dean Winchester, since he created him. He doubts Kripke has any idea who Dean is now, really doubts that he can care as much about how he says goodbye as Jensen does.
Take it or leave it.
“I have to,” he tells Misha. “I don’t think there’s anything else.”
Misha frowns, a slight downward tilt to the corners of his mouth, and pulls his sunglasses off his head, setting them on the table. “Then I think you have a couple of options here.”
“I’m listening,” Jensen tells him, because he really is. Misha is the fucking smartest person he knows. Not book smart, like Jared, or maybe even street smart, but just bone-deep smart. And Jensen wants his opinion.
“One,” Misha says, holding up a finger. “You can be a diva. Phone it in. Make it clear you’re not on board, don’t give it your all, maybe they’ll switch gears and you’ll get something different.” He must see the disgust on Jensen’s face, the vehement protest at this unprofessinalism building in his throat, because Misha smiles, taps Jensen’s chin with his raised finger, and quickly raises another. “Two, you can try your hardest to wrestle the steering away. Read your lines sure, but force your own reading. Take their intent away, give it the meaning you think it should have, alternate the path to your own ending. Make it too ridiculous to end up in the place they’ve told you Dean is going.”
“That sounds great in theory,” Jensen says, still frowning. “But nothing is stopping them from doing what they wrote out no matter how ridiculous my acting choices make it seem, and then I’ve just fucked the whole show for everybody.”
Misha shrugs. “Fine, you want option three?”
“Oh, there’s an option three?”
Mish eyes him seriously, for once not responding to Jensen’s sarcasm. “Act the hell out of it,” he says seriously. “They gave you a shitty ending. That’s – that’s a bad hand Jen, but they can’t stop your talent. They can’t stop you from putting all your love for Dean and the life he should have had into your performance. You know where this is all going before the season even begins,” Misha leans forward. “Give Dean the send-off he deserves, and when the moments come, because they will – give Dean what he deserves.” Misha studies his face, uncharacteristically solemn. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Jensen?”
“When things come that are good,” Jensen says hoarsely, “Give them to him. Put my all into giving for Dean.”
“Exactly.”
Jensen narrows his eyes at him. “The hell do you know that I don’t?”
Misha grins, tapping the table and standing up. He holds his hand out to Jensen, and Jensen takes it, letting him pull him out the chair. Misha doesn’t let go of his hand right away, running his thumb over the back. “Apropos of nothing,” he smiles, eyes bright, “I feel like I haven’t asked you in a while – how do you feel about Destiel?”