ROASTED • JARED PADALECKI • COMPLETED • Wattys 2017

Chapter ➳ twenty three;

THANK YOU FOR 3k AND MORE!! I'm so thankful, sorry I haven't updated in YEARS! Here you go :)
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Jared's colourful eyes wonder around the small room nervously, avoiding eye contact with anyone as much as possible. Then they landed on Ashton's eyes behind the camera, and he instantly settles down.

"So I hear you, Jared, have a new girlfriend?" The interviewer asks through his thin lips. Jared could see on the wrinkled papers folded in his hands that those words weren't written on the script.

Jared's eyes rip away from Ashton's and smack towards the interviewers buzcut, a worried look taking over his expressions. "That's not true." He covers his surprise with a smile, looking at the camera and saying, "she's just a friend."

For some reason his heart sinks into his stomach, the word friend just didn't seem to fit right with Ashton. In the corner of his eye he sees her starting to fiddle in her chair, too. Weird.

"Just 'friends aye'." He says while putting his notes onto his lap to use air quotes. Jared just nods, hiding his probably noticeable annoyance. "Yes. Just friends. Why doesn't anyone mind their own business?" Jared's tall body shoots up as he storms out of the building, leaving everyone including Ashton behind.

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"Want to get ice-cream?" Ashton questions as soon as she finds Jared sitting in front of the front building's door. He nods, grateful she isn't mentioning the embarrassing moment that happened.

"I'm sorry about before." The two walk side by side across the footpath in the cold morning, the abandoned streets leading them towards the ice-cream parlour.

"What for? That you actually said your own words and not something from a script?" She scrunched her previously arched eyebrows and stops walking, grabbing his firm arm to stop him too.

"No, for saying we're just friends." Jared feels his stomach churning with nerves as Ashton giggles, hoping he hadn't just embarrassed himself even more.

"We are just friends, aren't we?" Ashton asks, and then as cliche as it sounds, it was as if everything surrounding them slowed down. The wind is brushing across their exposed skin gently, the brown leaves flying easily throughout the air and the birds stopped chirping.

Ashton closed her eyes first, Jared then followed. Their heads were leaning closer towards each other's, Jared bending down as low as possible. "Hey guys!" Misha charges towards them, and they jump around in surprise.

"We have to get back, or were gonna get in trouble." He then turns around and runs back towards the big building. Ashton wraps her arm around Jared's waist and they walk back inside the warm building behind Misha. Not finishing what they started.