#iage difference

Dejectedly, Jared packed the black dress in his bag when they dismantled the film set and sent everyone home. He wasn’t sorry to be leaving Napa behind him, but when he walked into his house back in L.A., it felt empty knowing that Y/N/N wouldn’t be here with him anymore. 

Everything had gone wrong in such a short space of time that Jared felt like he’d gone underwater and then re-emerged with his head on backwards. Nothing made sense anymore, and his temper was shorter than ever, which Jensen continued to call him out on. Jensen had somehow managed to keep a level head through all of this; he was the only reason Jared wasn’t currently in the news or in jail for attacking Spencer Morgan. 

They had tried to go to the police, but as neither of them had witnessed Y/N/N’s assault, or Meredith’s, the officers had said there was nothing they could do. Y/N/N would have to make the report herself in order for them to pursue the issue. Jared had tried to argue that he should be able to make an accusation on Meredith’s behalf, as her legal guardian and since she’s been incapacitated as a result of the attack, but they didn’t have any actual evidence to accuse Morgan of her rape. All they had was the fact that he’d been at the same party as them; a party that hundreds of other people had also been in attendance at, as the police had reminded them. 

“But her screaming–” Jensen tried to protest. 

“Sir, I am sorry, but we just can’t arrest someone because a girl who’s mentally unwell happened to begin screaming when she heard a video clip playing,” the officer had shaken her head morosely, clearly sympathetic, but not willing to bend any rules for them. “Look, if Miss L/N decides she would like to report her sexual assault, I will of course look into it, and follow up on any further leads connected to the accused, but without her cooperation, my hands are tied,” she sighed. 

Jared found himself grinding his teeth at the memory, and was only shaken from his thoughts by the sound of his phone ringing. His heart leapt with hope like it did every time his phone made a sound, but his spirits fell again when he saw it was just Jensen. 

“Hey,” he answered the call dully. 

“Hey, man. Are you home?” Jensen asked urgently. 

“Yeah, why?” Jared yawned. He’d felt permanently exhausted the past couple of weeks. He started to head towards the kitchen in the vain hope that there was still a bag of coffee grounds in the freezer. 

“Turn on the news.” 

“Why?” Jared stopped short. 

“Just do it,” Jensen huffed in aggravation, and Jared could picture him rolling his eyes. 

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” Jared yawned again as he crossed to his living room and turned on the TV. “What channel?” 

“Five.” 

Jared tuned to Channel Five and saw the ticker tape at the bottom giving details of the press conference that was going on. A stuffy looking man in a crisp grey suit was standing at a podium on the steps of some fancy colonial building. 

“Who’s this asshat?” Jared scoffed. 

“Congressman from Virginia. I’ve been investigating him in connection with the college admissions story. There’s a lot of people who know a guy, who know a guy, who know him; lots of strings leading back to his office,” Jensen explained. 

“Is that why he’s on the news?” Jared asked, “Did someone beat you to your story?” 

“No, he’s announcing that he’s running for governor of Virginia – but that’s not what’s important – look behind him,” Jensen urged. 

Jared squinted at the row of people lined up behind the congressman. They were all a bit fuzzy, because the cameras were focused on the speaker, but he could make out the general appearance of the men and women in equally stuffy suits – and one younger girl. 

“Wait. Is that…?” Jared trailed off, staring hard at the girl to try to make out more concrete details. 

“It looks like Y/N/N, right?” Jensen said excitedly. “I’m not losing my mind, that’s her?” 

“The fucking cameras won’t look back at her,” Jared growled in frustration, walking back behind the couch to see if the image looked any different from a distance, like a Monet painting. 

“Hang on, he’s wrapping up, maybe they’ll–There! It’s her!” Jensen was practically shouting into the phone, Jared could hear him clear as day even though he’d dropped his hand by his side, and the cell was nowhere near his ear anymore. 

He was standing frozen, watching as the congressman was joined at the podium by a woman – who must be Y/N/N’s mother – and Y/N/N herself. She looked happy, but something in her expression reminded Jared of how she used to look when she saw him and Quinn together. On the outside she was what she thought people expected to see, but inside she was burying something intensely unhappy. She was hurting. 

“Jensen, do you know where this guy is?” Jared picked up the phone again, interrupting whatever his friend was in the middle of saying. 

“What? Uh, yeah,” Jensen stuttered, taking a couple seconds to catch up. “Yeah, I know where to find him.” 

“Good. Book a flight, I’m heading to yours now.” Jared hung up and took a deep breath, looking at Y/N/N on the TV one more time. 

“We’re coming to get you, Y/N/N,” he whispered under his breath. “Just hang in there.” 

“How do you know where this guy’s house is?” Jared asked, mildly concerned and impressed as Jensen drove their rental car through the jam-packed streets of the capital. Jensen flicked his eyes sideways a little sheepishly. 

“It wasn’t illegal or anything,” Jensen scoffed, he knew that look. “I called his campaign office, luckily I got an intern who was a bit of an idiot, said the magazine wanted to send him a congratulatory gift basket after his announcement, the kid coughed it right up,” he chuckled under his breath, honestly amazed it had been that easy. 

“Sooo… that kid’s getting fired when they find out,” Jared pulled his face into an expression of disapproval. 

“Relax,” Jensen brushed him off, signalling a right turn and slowing down as he drove onto a street lined with tall brick townhouses. “He’s not ever gonna know we were here.” 

“He might when his daughter goes missing again,” Jared grumbled under his breath, but then remembered with a sinking feeling that Y/N/N might not even want to come back with them. 

The car crept along the street as both men ducked their heads low enough to see clearly out the windows, looking for the correct address. There weren’t any parking spaces free in front of Y/N/N’s house but Jensen figured that was maybe for the best, it would help them keep a low profile. There were six concrete steps up to the stoop, and the tall charcoal double doors, almost twice the height of Jared, were flanked by two stone carvings that looked like some kind of abstract African animals. There was an iron knocker in the centre of the right hand door in the shape of a lion’s head, and Jared reached out and knocked it once, twice, three times. 

“This guy’s a bit pretentious, isn’t he?” he bent down to whisper to Jensen as they waited awkwardly on the doorstep. 

“He’s a politician, what else did you expect?” Jensen smirked. 

They waited another few moments, but there was no response, so Jensen tried knocking a little harder, hoping the sound would echo loudly enough in the no doubt large house that was waiting behind the doors. This time they heard footsteps, and they quickly straightened up and put on their most polite smiles in case someone besides Y/N/N answered the door, but luckily, when the door finally opened, the face that was staring back at them from the other side of the threshold was just the one they had wanted to see. But they only saw it for a moment before the door was slamming shut again, and they heard the lock very audibly engaged. 

“Y/N/N, come on!” Jared and Jensen were shouting through the door. 

She didn’t know what to do. Half of her had been so relieved to see them, but then all the horrible things Jared had said the last time she saw him came crashing back down around her and she’d shut the door before she had really thought about what might happen next. She should have known they wouldn’t just go away – they’d tracked her down all the way from California. 

How on earth had they found her? Maybe Jensen had used his press connections and gotten in touch with those reporters who’d found her house when that article came out a couple weeks ago. According to her stepfather, who’d called their publications’ offices to interrogate them, their gossip watch dogs had recognised her as the congressman’s stepdaughter in the photo with Jared. It had been on the cover of a pretty well circulated magazine, after all. There were whole offices of people dedicated to scouring the internet for anything that could be potentially embarrassing to a politician; they had face-books of all their family members that they had to study so they would recognise anyone if they ever saw them. The lengths that people would go to just to make other people’s lives difficult always astonished her. 

“Y/N/N!” More knocking shook the door on its hinges, breaking Y/N/N from her thoughts. “Y/N/N, please talk to me.” It was only Jensen’s voice – and not Jared’s – calling to her, she noticed. “I sent Jared back to the car, I get why you don’t want to see him and I’m not gonna force you to, but could you please let me in so we can talk?” 

There was a pause again as Y/N/N considered what to do. 

“Please? It’s really cold out here!” Jensen shouted, and Y/N/N couldn’t help smirking to herself. Of course the California boys wouldn’t be able to handle the sub-fifty-degree temperatures. 

With a heavy sigh she hoisted herself up off of the bottom step of the staircase that she’d been cowering on and cautiously made her way to the door, opening it a crack and peaking around the side to check that Jared really had gone to wait somewhere else, and Jensen wasn’t lying to her. But there was only one man standing on the stoop, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket looking sheepish. 

“Hey,” he gave her a small smile, as if he half expected her to slam the door in his face again. 

“What are you doing here?” Y/N/N asked. 

“What, you thought we were just gonna let you run away and quietly accept that we’d never see you again? Especially after everything that just happened,” Jensen sighed, and now it was Y/N/N’s turn to look sheepish. 

“You guys really shouldn’t be here, someone might see you,” she ducked her head out of the door and looked up and down the street, still paranoid that some persistent photographer might be watching the house. 

“Can we go somewhere else then?” Jensen asked hopefully. “There’s gotta be a coffee shop or something around here.” 

But Y/N/N shook her head nervously. 

“People might recognise me, since my stepdad announced his campaign… if anyone sees me out with you and my picture ends up in some gossip magazine again he might actually kill me,” Y/N/N laughed awkwardly, hoping Jensen would think it was a joke, but his face fell. 

“Y/N/N are you scared of him? Is that the reason you ran away from home, are you unsafe here?” Jensen asked anxiously, taking a step forward towards her but Y/N/N pulled back further behind the door. 

“I really can’t talk here, Jensen,” her eyes darted around again. Definitely worried someone was watching them, then, Jensen thought. 

“Okay, okay,” he held up his hands and backed up again. “Where can you?” 

Y/N/N gulped nervously and wracked her brains. 

“Are you staying anywhere?”

“We hadn’t gotten that far yet,” Jensen chuckled. “We kind of rushed out here.” 

“Okay, go out and pick somewhere kinda cheap. Not like, prostitute cheap but not actually very nice; somewhere no one would think a politician or actor might stay,” she smirked. 

“And then what?” 

“And then text me the address and I’ll let you know when I can get away.” Y/N/N’s eyes glanced around the street again, looking for the car Jared might be waiting in. “Um, just you, okay?” 

Jensen sighed. “He’s really sorry, Y/N/N. He wants to apologise.”

“I just…” Y/N/N swallowed thickly, “I can’t talk to him right now. Not yet.” 

“Okay,” Jensen nodded in resignation. “Oh, how am I gonna text you, the phone company said your number wasn’t connected anymore.” 

“I’ll switch it back on. My parents don’t know I have that phone so don’t call it or anything, just one text, yeah?” 

“Okay, I’ll let you know when I find a place,” Jensen agreed. He stepped away but then turned back to Y/N/N. “It’s really good to see you, Y/N/N,” he smiled, and she shot him a sad smile back before quickly closing the door again, and locking it with a resounding click.

There was a coffee shop next to the hotel Jensen had texted her the address for, and she asked him to meet her inside. He found her sitting at a small table in the back of the shop, which was mostly empty given the fact it was dinnertime, not really a prime time for coffee. He smiled when he saw that she already had a cup of coffee for him waiting at the table. 

“Do you ever stop taking care of people?” Jensen asked as he sat down. He meant it mostly as a joke, but Y/N/N smiled a little sadly and gave a shrug, because the reality was that she didn’t really stop; that was all she knew how to do, and she knew she did it well. 

“I figured you’d need it, the jet lag killed me when I came back. I’m still barely over it,” she tried to keep the tone of her conversation light, upbeat. 

“You don’t have to get over it,” Jensen hedged, wrapping his fingers gratefully around the warm mug and looking at her seriously. “You and Jared can clear this up, you can come back. The movie is over, everyone’s back in L.A. now.” 

“So I go back to being Jared’s housekeeper?” Y/N/N raised her brow sceptically. “And keep living with the guy I’m in love with while he dates his freaking stunning co-star, and just… what? What kind of life is that?” 

“Jared and Quinn aren’t really dating,” Jensen sighed, rubbing his neck awkwardly. “I told him to tell you a million times and apparently they were ‘forbidden’ from talking about it, but they’re not actually together. It’s all a publicity stunt for the movie, just to get people interested in them.”

“That’s…” Y/N/N’s head was reeling. What the hell? “That’s really stupid,” she finally landed on saying, and Jensen laughed loudly, throwing his head back in amusement. 

“Yeah, I know. I told him that, too.” 

“But, I saw them kissing,” Y/N/N remembered with a sinking feeling, the small shock of happiness she’d had at Jensen’s revelation melting away. 

“What? When?” Jensen asked incredulously. Jared had never mentioned that to him. 

“In private, on her balcony. No one else was there for them to be ‘pretending’ around,” Y/N/N gulped. She knew it was too good to be true. 

“Look, you’ll have to ask Jared about that one, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Jensen reached out and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Y/N/N couldn’t keep the grimace of suspicion off her face though. “Okay, look, forget about Jared for a second. I need to know, if you stayed here, would you be happier? Because the way you acted at your house, and the fact that you already ran away from these people in the first place, I don’t think you would be. I’m not even convinced you’d be safe, which is an even bigger concern, really.” Jensen pressed, and Y/N/N let go of his hand immediately and looked around, clearly nervous about being overheard. 

Slowly, she looked at Jensen and shook her head. “I don’t want to stay here. I just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.” 

“What made you run away Y/N/N? You tried so hard to leave them behind, do you still believe in those reasons?” She nodded shakily, and Jensen noticed the tears shimmering along the bottom of her eyelids. “What happened, Y/N/N?” 

“I can’t tell you,” she whispered, a tear escaping and rolling down her cheek, which she quickly brushed away. “He would…” she broke off, remembering her stepfather’s threats all too vividly.

“Did you find out about something you weren’t supposed to?” Jensen asked, and Y/N/N’s head snapped to attention, but she didn’t say anything, she didn’t even blink. He knew he’d hit upon the right track. “Did you find out about the college entrance scams he’s been running?” he asked bluntly, not seeing any reason to hold back. 

Y/N/N’s jaw dropped. 

“How did you know?” she whispered, utterly stunned. 

“It’s how I found you, actually,” Jensen leant forward so he could speak more softly, seeing how scared Y/N/N was, her eyes darting around wildly, scared they were being overheard. “That story I did for Stanford, I kept working on it after the initial player pieces came out. There’s a swimmer there who knew someone else in a similar situation, their parents had apparently done something and they knew nothing about it, they thought they’d gotten into the school on their own merit. I started following leads and it led to some more leads and eventually more and more of the strings started pulling back to one nonprofit education agency – and your stepfather’s campaign is down as the sole beneficiary. 

“How did you work all that out?” Y/N/N was stunned. 

“It took a long time, and a lot of work,” Jensen shrugged. “But I’m good at my job,” he winked, and Y/N/N couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up from her chest. 

“And that was how you found out who I was? Where I lived?” 

“I’d been keeping tabs on him. I was watching the news when he made his gubernatorial announcement and there you were, standing right behind him the whole time.” 

Y/N/N sat back and took all this new information in for a moment before taking a deep breath and asking: “What are you going to do? Now you know, I mean. Do you have enough evidence to go to the police or the FBI or someone?” 

“I’ve got people willing to give evidence if we’re showing a united front,” Jensen nodded soberly. “But I don’t have enough of a paper trail yet; if I’m going to go to the authorities I need something more substantial. They won’t just go on hearsay, and if I publish something to spur on an investigation, he might have time to destroy all the evidence.” 

“What if…” Y/N/N hesitated, taking another deep breath. “What if I could tell you where to find it? The paper trail, I mean.” 

Jensen blinked in astonishment. 

“You’ve seen papers? Actual documents?” he asked urgently. Y/N/N nodded. 

“That’s what happened, what made me run away,” she swallowed thickly and steeled herself to recount what had happened, something she’d never told anyone about before. “I got this acceptance letter from Georgetown, and I never applied there. I wasn’t really great at school,” she shrugged in nervous embarrassment. “I planned on going to community college, I don’t know what for but not going to college wasn’t really an option so I figured I’d pick something once I got there. But anyways, my stepdad told me they’d applied to Georgetown for me, because ‘they knew I could get in, I just didn’t believe in myself,’" Y/N/N rolled her eyes. 

“I knew that was bullshit, my grades were nowhere near good enough for a school like Georgetown. I knew girls at school with way better grades that got rejected. So I figured he must have asked someone to let me in as a favour, and I went looking for proof so I could call him out on that. I didn’t want to go to a school I knew I’d just wind up failing out of because he was embarrassed his stepdaughter was going to community college.” 

“And you found something proving he’d bribed your way into Georgetown?” Jensen asked, excitement bubbling in his chest. 

“Not just me,” Y/N/N admitted. “There were other emails, other letters. Checks that had been cashed… I saw my friend Katie’s name on something, but I didn’t look too hard. I didn’t want to tell her that…”

“That she didn’t make it into her dream school after all, it was a bribe,” Jensen nodded understandingly. “And when you found all the papers, you decided to run? So you wouldn’t have to say anything to anyone?” he asked hesitantly, sensing there was more to the story.

Y/N/N winced, remembering that night like it was happening all over again. “Not exactly.”

Chapter 32 coming April 26th or subscribe to my website to read the completed the story!

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