Runaway – Ch 8

Pairing: Jared x Reader
Warnings: mentions of past familial abuse
Tags: 🤷🏻‍♀️
WC: 2,307

Masterlist

Y/N/N could barely register Jared being in the house before he was leaving again. 

Of course, she’d noticed the tension Jared had been carrying in increasingly heavy loads over the past two weeks. Jared and Jensen’s friendship never ceased to amaze Y/N/N, Jensen worked freelance for a sports magazine, and spent most days working from Jared’s room, doing his best to keep him distracted and cheerful. They’d all fallen into a comfortable routine over the last month: Jared looking for auditions, Jensen working on his latest article, and Y/N/N keeping the house in order. By six every night the boys would come thundering down the stairs like two teenagers who hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After dinner they’d land on the couch in the den with a couple of beers and watch ESPN while Y/N/N cleaned up. Once she was done she would curl up in the free arm chair and enjoy the relaxing babble of the two people who had become her whole world overnight. 

Jensen wasn’t over today, though; he’d had to go into his office for an editorial meeting. Jared had been out for most of the morning, at the gym and then at a meeting with Cassie. Given the mood he’d returned and then quickly left in, Y/N/N was assuming that the meeting hadn’t gone all that well. Jared had known there was a chance it would be disappointing news, he’d already told Y/N/N so when he’d called her on his way to Cassie’s office for the last minute meeting. 

Y/N/N looked down at her phone and opened the contacts, wondering if she should text Jared to check on him, or text Jensen to let him know Jared could probably do with a friend tonight. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the two names, steadfastly ignoring the third number at the top of the list. 

When she’d run away, Y/N/N had taken the SIM card out of her phone and tossed it into the Potomac. She deleted all her photos, all her contacts, all her apps, and bought a new disposable SIM from a supermarket two states over, so there was no way anyone would be able to track her. She’d only loaded one contact back into her phone, she couldn’t help herself wanting to keep just a few remnants of her old life. But she hadn’t dialled the number, she knew no one would answer if she did. 

It was her dad’s.

It was when Y/N/N’s dad died that everything had started to go wrong. 

Y/N/N had been the happiest little girl in the world at one point. She loved her parents, she loved her house, she loved her friends and the neighbour’s golden retriever. She liked her school, and she liked that her mom taught there, so she could wave and say hi whenever her class trooped past her mom’s classroom – and her mom would wave and say hi back with the biggest smile every time. 

Even she could admit that her dad had spoiled her rotten, something her mom always thoroughly disapproved of. She’d never say anything, but anytime he’d brought Y/N/N home a present, or taken her out for a day trip just the two of them, her mom always wore this sad, sort-of smile. Never angry, but never happy either. 

When Y/N/N was ten, her dad had passed away, and that, at least in her mind, was when her mom had stopped caring altogether. Even though her job as a teacher hadn’t required her mother to be at work past five at the latest, she still wouldn’t come home. She would go out – a lot. Sometimes she wouldn’t come back at all. When she did come back, she usually wasn’t alone. 

It went on like that until Y/N/N was about thirteen. That was when the men her mom had been bringing home became just one man. It was a quick engagement, and soon Y/N/N found her life uprooted to a townhouse in D.C., away from the safe familiarity of her suburban paradise-turned-hell. Her new stepfather was a politician, a Congressman, and her mom liked how important she felt now that she was with him. Y/N/N had never realised that was something her mother wanted out of life to begin with. Sometimes she wonders if she had known, is that something she would have been able to give her mom? Could she have prevented any of what had happened next? 

Her stepfather’s constituency was in Virginia, and his other house wasn’t that far away from where Y/N/N and her mom had been living, albeit on the wealthier side of town, but he spent most of his time in D.C., so that’s where they all had to be too. He’d tried to charm Y/N/N the way her dad used to, with presents and shopping trips and overly friendly hugs, but the difference was Y/N/N could tell her stepdad never meant it. He never loved her. She wasn’t even positive he really loved her mom – but her mom seemed to love him, so she tried to let that be enough. 

Along with the fancy new townhouse in D.C. and all the fancy private parties her mom got whisked along to, Y/N/N got whisked along to a fancy new private school. That had been one of the worst things that could have happened, in her opinion, because while Y/N/N had never hated school she was also never particularly good at it. She felt like everyone at the new school was speaking a foreign language most of the time. Everything was ‘yes, sir’, or ‘no, ma’am’– no more waving hi to her mom in the hallways, or having lunch with Emily, the choir instructor, when it was raining and they couldn’t go on the playground. Now it was sitting quietly with Mrs. Rovern in detention after school because she’d failed another pop quiz in math. 

Home wasn’t much better. Y/N/N’s mom had never been too upset with her when she brought home a bad report card. As a teacher she understood that institutional learning wasn’t everyone’s strong suit, and as long as Y/N/N promised she was trying her best, her mom had been satisfied. Her stepdad was not so generous. The first time she’d brought home a failing grade and had to have him sign the form, because her mom was away at a spa weekend with a load of other Congressmen’s wives, she’d been shouted at until she was sobbing, promising it would never happen again and she’d do better. 

When it did happen again, her stepfather had looked sternly at her mother and told her that she better not let her child become an embarrassment to him. All of his colleagues sent their daughters to that school too, and he knew how teenage girls talked. He wasn’t wrong about that, Y/N/N had been laughed out of the courtyard at lunch that afternoon when her ‘friends’ caught a glimpse at the ‘F’ on top of her chemistry test. When her mother insisted she didn’t know what to do or how to fix the problem, he’d taken the issue into his own hands. Y/N/N was pretty sure most people didn’t spank their fourteen-year-old children but as her stepdad liked to remind them, they weren’t ‘most people’ anymore. They were important now, and that came with particular expectations.

Y/N/N could never seem to meet her stepfather’s expectations, no matter how hard she tried. She hadn’t conducted herself the way her stepfather expected her to at the political functions he had to bring her to, or at the country club they belonged to now, or when he brought them to Congressman Murray’s house during the summer to go swimming. She crossed her legs wrong, she leaned her elbows on the table, she tried to talk to the waiters or the golf caddies like they were friends. Everything she did seemed to illustrate to her stepfather just how useless she was. Eventually they stopped bringing her places, and they were all happier for it. 

The idea of college had been the little light in the distance that they were all praying would come quicker. Though Y/N/N, for her part, wasn’t even sure she would get into a ‘proper school’, as her stepfather called them, but she knew she had scraped high enough grades in some subjects to at least get into a community college. If she picked out outside of the District or Virginia, there’d be no reason for her to hang around at home for one minute longer than she needed. And she was positive her stepfather would pay for the tuition, room and board just to get rid of her. 

Y/N/N had wound up further away than she or her mother and stepfather had probably ever planned on. But after everything that had happened, a college that was only one state over was never going to be far away enough. The other side of the country had felt like a safe bet – somewhere no one would ever think to look for her.

She wondered if her mother was concerned, how hard her stepfather might be looking for her? The answer was probably ‘not much’ to both queries. After all, they had technically kicked her out in the end. Maybe she had exaggerated a bit to Jared earlier, they hadn’t said “you have ten minutes to pack, now go.” 

It was more of a subtle eviction, her mother saying “You ruin everything. I wish you would just disappear already.” 

Y/N/N bet they would be so relieved at her disappearance, maybe they wouldn’t even report her missing to the police. She was nearly eighteen after all, and they’d all been counting on her moving out soon. Really all she did was bring about the eventuality a few months early. By the time they found her – if they were even looking – she would be legally free of them, anyhow. And he wouldn’t be able to do anything about that, even as a big, important Congressman. 

Deciding against texting either of the guys right now, Y/N/N gathered her keys, wallet and some shopping bags and headed out; down the road to the bus stop. She was heading to the bigger grocery store a little further away today, because Jared had mentioned earlier that he was craving a steak and the store near his house never had anything other than chicken in stock. Y/N/N tried to think of something she could get to help cheer him up, but she had to admit that she still didn’t know all that much about Jared beyond the surface level. They were both very private people, and it was like neither wanted to shatter the easy comfort they’d settled into by breaking that wall between them; the one that hid all the really important things about a person. 

Wandering the supermarket with everything she needed for dinner already picked out, Y/N/N tried to wrack her brains for an idea of something to bring a smile to Jared’s face. She made her way through the home sections, giggling to herself at the sight of some of the more ridiculous things they had for sale. A candlestick holder in the shape of a monkey might make her laugh, but she didn’t think that was really something Jared would appreciate. Her eyes eventually landed on the toys section, thinking maybe she could get him a board game – she hadn’t seen any in the house, and pitting Jared and Jensen against each other in any kind of competition had so far proved to be entertaining. 

When she got back home, it seemed like Jared didn’t need help cheering up anymore. Y/N/N found him humming to himself and tossing things into a blender, presumably making a protein smoothie if he’d just returned from his extra run. 

“What’s got you so peppy?” She couldn’t help smiling too. Jared’s good moods always felt contagious.  

“Don’t want to jinx it!” Jared shouted over the whirl of the blender, grinning even wider. 

“Okay,” Y/N/N raised her eyebrows bemusedly but didn’t pry. She went about emptying the grocery bags while Jared kept blending away, and she had to turn to shout at him when he tried to speak but she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. “What?!” she laughed as he cringed and turned off the appliance. 

“Did you want any?” Jared gestured at the greenish-brown concoction and Y/N/N made a face like she was going to be sick in response. “Nevermind,” he laughed, holding up his hands in surrender before grabbing down a glass. “Do I see steaks in that bag?” 

“Yes, you do,” Y/N/N/ nodded, pleased he’d noticed. 

“And did you happen to pick up any more clothes for yourself like I told you to last week?” Jared asked pointedly, and Y/N/N rolled her eyes. 

“Yes, sir,” she used the title slightly more mockingly than she usually would. “I ordered some things online last week. Thank you, again,” she added, still feeling awkward that he had insisted she buy a few things for herself. 

“You, Miss Y/N, are most welcome,” Jared smiled broadly, and gave her a small squeeze on the shoulder when he passed, taking his smoothie to go watch tv, and unknowingly leaving Y/N/N blushing in the kitchen.