Runaway – Ch 17

Pairing: Jared x Reader
Tags: angst, secrets, tension, plotting
WC: 2.2k

Masterlist

“Morning, lovebirds!” Morgan sauntered up to the breakfast table with a green smoothie and a copy of a magazine tucked under his arm. Jared and Y/N/N both looked up from their plates, thoroughly alarmed. 

Jared glanced around the occupants of their table: there was only Y/N/N, Quinn and Charlie sitting with him, and then a wide berth between them and a group of sound technicians on the far end of the benches. How could Morgan possibly know anything about his weekend with Y/N/N, about that moment in the hotel room when he’d thought they were about to kiss? He couldn’t, Jared concluded, no way. Y/N/N’s thoughts were racing violently down a similar tread, though neither were aware of their shared predicament.  

Gulping down his nerves, Jared gave Morgan a bright smile. 

“Is there something stronger than spinach in that smoothie?” he retorted, earning a sharp chuckle from the director. 

“It’s only Monday, I won’t start drinkin’ until at least eleven, you know that,” Morgan chortled, shoving himself on the end of Jared’s bench and slapping the magazine he was carrying down onto the table. 

The cover of the tabloid was taken up with a grainy photograph of a vineyard, two horses in the foreground, and a man in a cowboy hat gallantly helping a slender blonde woman down from her mount. It was unmistakably a photo of Jared and Quinn. Y/N/N and Jared both recognised the outfit as what he had been wearing the morning of her birthday in order to go riding with Quinn, rather than an image that was taken during filming. 

Jared raised a brow and coughed uncomfortably, looking up from the magazine and passing it over to Quinn, who had her hand outstretched, hoping for a closer look. 

“Are these two stars giving their own love a chance?” Charlie read over Quinn’s shoulder and snorted. “That’s an awful headline,” he laughed, returning to his eggwhite omelette. 

“It’s not a great photo either,” Quinn added, unimpressed. 

“It’s great coverage though!” Morgan chimed in, taking a satisfied sip of his smoothie and reaching to take the magazine back from Quinn. “I’m keepin’ this, it’s our first hit in the gossip rags.” 

“I’ve always hated those things,” Jared mumbled, taking a disgruntled bite of his oatmeal. 

“No press is bad press, brother,” Morgan chuckled, ducking out from around the bench and whacking Jared jovially on the arm with the rolled up tabloid. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jared waved him off, unimpressed by the cliched saying. He had never particularly agreed with that premise. 

“See you on set, lovebirds,” the director swanned off, leaving Jared and Quinn rolling their eyes at his back. 

“How did they get that photo of us anyways?” Jared asked after a moment of silence when they’d all returned to their breakfasts. 

“How do they ever?” Quinn shrugged, clearly unconcerned. 

“I don’t like the idea of someone watching us like that,” Jared sighed, genuinely uncomfortable. “Like, that wasn’t us filming something on set, that was a private conversation.” 

Y/N/N’s eyes darted between the two stars at those words. She’d been demurely silent during the whole exchange, hoping to give off the impression that she didn’t care for the salacious news, but that was a lie. She was trying very hard not to show how uneasy the photo had made her feel, because she didn’t want to think about the reasons why. Jealousy wasn’t a word she was ready to acknowledge in relation to her feelings for Jared; that would require that she acknowledged there being feelings there in the first place – something she was vehemently denying to herself. 

“Paparazzi have gotten into far more private spaces than out in the middle of a vineyard,” Quinn shrugged, clearly unphased. “It’s not like there’s a load of security patrolling the perimeter,” she laughed when Jared had grimaced, unconvinced. 

“You don’t think someone on the crew would have sold them a photo, do you?” Y/N/N mused out loud, thinking of the candies she had on her work phone of the cast and crew behind the scenes. 

“Maybe someone’s phone got hacked! That would be a scandal, wouldn’t it?” Cece cut in, eyes gleaming in excitement.

“I hope not,” Y/N/N shuddered, “that’s so creepy to think about.”

“That’s the price of fame sometimes,” Quinn sighed, pushing herself off the bench dramatically. “You coming Jared?” 

Jared looked up at Quinn, confused, before Y/N/N jumped in on his behalf. 

“His call time isn’t for another hour, he’ll catch you in hair and makeup then,” she smiled, happy with her confidence in Jared’s schedule and whereabouts today. 

“Ugh, why do I have to start a whole hour before you?” Quinn moped.

“Because you’re high maintenance,” Jared snorted. His sass earned him a playful smack on the shoulder as Quinn passed him by. 

“See ya later, Jay,” she waved, rolling her eyes, and Cece picked up the remains of their breakfast, scurrying after her.

Jensen ran into Jared at the bottom of the stairs up to the porch of the villa, messenger bag with laptop and notebooks slug over his shoulder, indicating he’d been working on a new article that morning. 

“Hey, man,” Jared gave a startled chuckle and clapped him on the back by way of a greeting. “What, uh… what’re you doin’ here?” 

“I wanted to check in on Y/N/N,” Jensen nodded in his direction of travel, the upper floors of the main house. 

“Oh,” Jared followed Jensen, heading towards his own room. “And they just let you in at the gate?” He looked at his friend skeptically. 

“I’ve still got the visitor’s badge from the other day,” Jensen flashed the laminated card clipped to the strap of his bag. 

“Does Y/N/N know you’re coming? I sent her back from set early to rest, she might be sleeping,” Jared explained. 

“Yeah, I texted her, she said I could come,” Jensen assuaged Jared’s worries. 

“Right. Okay, good.” 

The tension between Jared and Jensen was palpable. Jared wasn’t inclined to think about why that was; Jensen thought he had a pretty good idea, but he knew Jared wasn’t ready to hear it. 

“Do you want to come see her with me?” Jensen asked when they reached the branch in the corridor that peeled off towards Y/N/N’s room. 

“I uhm, I can’t,” Jared’s reply was stilted and awkward. “I’ve just got this ‘urgent’ text from Cassie, she wants me to get on this Zoom call like, five minutes ago,” he elaborated, and Jensen nodded in understanding. 

“Yeah, sure. You go superstar,” he waved Jared off and headed in the direction of Y/N/N’s room. Jared turned down the opposite corridor towards his own room. Behind him, he heard Charlie give Jensen an exuberant greeting in his usual overtly-personal manner. Jared ducked into his room before the assistant could catch him too. 

Powering up his laptop, Jared pulled up the email from his agent and opened the virtual meeting link she’d sent him through. He’d expected to see Cassie’s face pop up on his screen, and it did, but so did three other faces. 

“Woah, I’m late to the party, sorry guys,” Jared waved sheepishly, interrupting the group’s idle chit-chat about the weather. 

“Hi, Jared” Cassie heaves a sigh of relief at his appearance. “Sorry for the short notice, but we need to move quickly on this opportunity if we want it to work out in our favour.” Morgan, and the dark haired woman he didn’t recognise both nodded in agreement with Cassie’s statement. Quinn, at least, also looked just as perplexed as Jared felt. 

“What opportunity?” Jared asked. 

“The tabloid story from this morning,” Morgan elaborated, “the one I showed you at breakfast?” 

“Yeah,” Jared nodded skeptically, already not liking where this was going. “What about it?” 

“Mikayla came to me with an idea,” Cassie cut in brusquely — the woman Jared hadn’t recognised waved her hand a little to indicate who Cassie had meant. “And I jumped on the phone with Spencer at lunch and he agreed we should let this take off. So now we’re bringing it to you and Quinn.” 

“Okay, what exactly is this idea Mikayla?” Quinn asked pointedly. 

“We want to market you two as Hollywood’s new ‘it’ couple,” she explained animatedly. Reaching for something off screen, Mikayla pulled out a copy of the tabloid Morgan had shown them earlier that day. Jared cringed again seeing the photo, and he didn’t think his face hid it. 

“But… we’re not a couple,” he stated the obvious, looking to Quinn on the screen to back him up. 

“I get the sense that they might not care about that, Jar,” Quinn speculated; and she was correct, as it turned out. 

“Absolutely not! This is ludacris,” Jared objected the moment Cassie and Mikayla paused for air at the conclusion of their explanation. 

“Now, Jared, just take a moment to think—” Cassie tried to reason with him, she had enough experience working with Jared to know this is exactly how he would react to any scheme that involved cooperating with the paparazzi. 

“Cassie, Quinn and me aren’t a couple! The gossip will fizzle out if we just leave them to it, we don’t have to do anything.” 

“Jared,” Quinn interrupted this time, “they might have a point.” 

“What, you suddenly wanna go out with me Q?” Jared scoffed, clearly amused at the concept of Quinn wanting to date him. She shared in his laughter for a moment before trying again. 

“That’s not what we’re saying here. They’re saying they don’t want the gossip to die out, they want the buzz and the publicity, and let’s face it, people talking about a movie this early in production is never a bad thing.” Jared couldn’t disagree with her on that point, unfortunately. “So if we let everyone think we’re a couple…” Quinn shrugged, glancing over the hopeful faces of their respective agents and their director. “I don’t think it’s such a bad idea, us faking it for a while.” 

Jared dropped his head in his hands dejectedly, resigning himself to being outnumbered. He scrubbed his hands over his face and drew them back through his hair, contemplating. 

“How long would we have to be doing this?” Jared sighed, wondering how long he would have to live a lie. “Because I don’t think a fake break up will play well in the media whenever it happens. And one of our reps would take a hit, someone will always be the bad guy.” Jared tried to reason his way out of the scheme one last time. 

“We’ll want you together on the red carpet, absolutely. After that, it might be something we have to let tick along, and if the movie does really well, winds up in any nomination categories…” Mikayla trails off speculatively. 

“You want us to lie to the press about being a couple for more than a year? We won’t be out in time for the next award cycle, we’ll be in line for the year after next!” Jared protested, astonished. 

“God, I’m not that bad a girlfriend,” Quinn scoffed, a little offended. “Unless, Jar, are you seeing someone? Is that the problem?” her expression softened a little, startled but sympathetic. 

“What? No,” Jared shook his head quickly. “Why would you think that?” he asked suspiciously, like Quinn somehow knew about his weekend, and the inappropriate feelings it had awoken. 

“Well, then I don’t see any obstacles,” Cassie smiled brightly. “If you’re both single and we’re all in favour…” She, Mikayla and Morgan all exchanged looks through their cameras, followed up by Quinn giving an abortive little shrug. 

“If Jared’s okay with it then yeah, I’m in,” she nodded, looking to Jared for his decision. 

“Fucking hell,” he grunted, running a hand over his eye in resignation. “Fine.” 

“Wonderful,” Mikayla smiled brightly, accompanied by an emphatic clap of her hands. 

“I suppose it goes without saying, but this information doesn’t spread farther than the five of us, yes?” Cassie checked levelling them all with her most intimidating stare — Jared knew it well. 

“Well, obviously,” Quinn sighed, vaguely irritated. “But we’ll have to tell CeCe and Y/N/N, of course, so they can help us keep up appearances.” 

“Absolutely not,” Cassie shook her head emphatically and Quinn frowned, so Cassie expanded. “Look, I love Charlie, he’s a bright boy and he’s good at his job, but he has a mouth bigger than the state of Texas. You tell him you’re pretending to be a couple, that will be the story in every single headline.” 

“I unfortunately have to agree with you there,” Jared nodded, giving Quinn a sympathetic smile. “Charlie’s not great on the ‘secret keeping’ front.” 

“You can’t tell Y/N/N either, Jared,” Cassie added, and Jared felt a pang of guilt in his chest. He began to protest but Cassie cut across him swiftly. “I know you say she’s a good kid, and no, I haven’t seen any of your things pop up on eBay so she’s probably not a thief, but you’ve only known her a few months. We can’t trust her with something this delicate, I’m sorry.” 

Her tone left no room for argument, so Jared simply nodded, giving her a tight lipped smile, all the while feeling his heart sink inexplicably lower in his chest.