Prompt - "This isn't the way this was supposed to go"
Jazz didn’t know what he was expecting when he stepped into the opulent ballroom. Men and women from Cliffton were scattered throughout the floor; the Majerian men and women so easy to spot against their Umani counterparts. Majerians, Jazz knew, were stout, broad, and muscled; their skin a rich tan verses the deep browns of the much more lithe and tall Umani.
And here he was, one of the very few white men present in the room. This fact would make him self-conscious, if he wasn’t already about to claw his own skin off or chew through his bottom lip for other reasons.
He was in Cliffton.
He was staying with the Jansens.
He hadn’t seen Wes - but that didn’t mean Wes wasn’t here, helping his father or his brother set things up or in the kitchens or something. He was so, so convinced Wes was here. He was convinced Wes had already told Devin Jazz was here, in Cliffton, right now.
And Devin still hadn’t read his messages.
He hadn’t read them for months. Hadn’t so much as sent anything back. And part of Jazz hoped - no, prayed - that Devin would snap out of it and message him back. I’ve been cleared, Jazz had written, maybe a thousand times. We can talk again. Please, sweetheart, just message me back. I love you.
I need to know you’re still here.
It ate at him, standing next to Mitchel and glancing around the room. He scanned every Umani he could see. He held his breath when he saw yet another Majerian step in the door, someone on their arm. Would he even recognize Ellis, if he walked into this event? He’d only “met” the man a couple of times, and each of those times Jazz was so completely focused on Devin.
Mitchel steered him towards their table, towards President Pierre. The three of them made small talk; Dr. Jansen walked over to them at some point, asking mild, but probing, questions. Jazz smiled and squashed his attraction to the older man as much as he possibly could. Jazz was Head Councilor; he was the highest “ranking” representative of the Alban Empire to step foot in Cliffton in over fifty years.
It wouldn’t do to make goo-goo eyes at their host. Especially not in front of the obviously homophobic President Pierre. The way he’d reacted when Jazz had casually mentioned Savin and why he couldn’t join them in Cliffton had told Jazz everything he needed to know.
He followed Mitchel, studied him as he made his way around the room. He listed as Mitchel gave him subtle pointers, as Mitchel guided him through conversations he, quite frankly, was no where near qualified to have. Why Lin thought he was ready for this kind of responsibility was beyond him.
Keep your friends close, she told him once. She’d left it unfinished, his mind filling in the blanks and his stomach souring at the thought. It crept up on him, now and again.
“Is everything alright, Jasper?” Mitchel asked once they’d found themselves in a fairly-secluded corner. “You’ve been… unnaturally quiet, all evening.”
“I’m - alright,” Jazz answered, plucking a champagne flute from an array of them suddenly shoved under his nose. He smiled at the server before murmuring his thanks, bringing the glass to his lips as soon as the server was gone. “It’s just - a lot, being here.”
“I can imagine,” Mitchel said, nodding to himself. He, too, took a glass, though he held it close to his chest and tapped his fingers against the stem. “I warned Emperor Cruz that this might be too much for you - your first true diplomatic event as Head Councilor, to Cliffton, of all places…”
“Lin has never cared too much for letting me stay in my comfort zone,” Jazz said with shrug. “She pushed me as her intern. She pushed just as much as you did to have Casio add me to the Council. I just... I wasn’t expecting --”
He cut himself off, something catching his attention out of the corner of his eye. Frowning to himself, he tried to find what it was that had distracted him, but whatever it was had already disappeared within the crowd. With a sigh, he turned his attention back to Mitchel and gave him a slight, sad smile. “I had imagined coming here under… slightly different circumstances.”
Mitchel offered him a ghost of a smile back. “Of that I have no doubts.” Sighing himself, he nudged Jazz away from the corner they were in. “You are handling yourself remarkably well, however. I’m sure Lin will be pleased with your performance here, this evening.”
“She’ll be even more pleased if I can get this deal to go through.” He lifted his flute to his lips again, this time truly tasting the champagne in question. Part of him wanted to down the whole thing in one shot, but held himself back from doing so. Mitchel’s eyes darted above his head, his smile dropping entirely from his face. “What is it?” he asked, turning to glance behind him.
His grip tightened on his glass as his breath caught in his throat. A Majerian military man - easily identifiable by his dress greens and his short, cropped blonde hair and ice blue eyes contrasting starkly against tanned skin - was standing next to an Umani man with thin braids twisted in an elaborate half-updo, jewels dotting the entirety of the Umani’s head. He couldn’t see the Umani’s face, but he knew that build - and he knew the Majerian man, whose face he could see.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, tears stinging his eyes. “M-Mitchel - Mitchel I think that’s --”
Mitchel grimaced as Jazz turned to him, lifting his own glass to his lips and flicking his gaze away from Jazz’s own. “I believe you may be right,” he said, keeping his voice low. “But, need I remind you, we’re here on official Empire business, Callahan --”
“Don’t ‘Callahan’ me,” Jazz snapped, turning to glare at Mitchel. “You saw him earlier, didn’t you? You’ve been steering me away from him?”
That time, Mitchel’s expression darkened. “Jasper --”
“No, you’ve been - god, I can’t believe you,” Jazz managed to hiss without so much as raising his voice or drawing attention to them. “I’m going to go introduce myself.”
“I believe that would be unwise --”
“I don’t give a fuck what you think, right now,” he growled, shooting Mitchel another dark look. “I haven’t seen him in months --”
“For good reason, Jasper,” Mitchel said. He grabbed Jazz’s shoulder and pulled him close, keeping him in place before he could march himself towards Ellis. That had to be Ellis. “He’s ignored your messages, hasn’t he? You may have cut contact because of your impending arrest with the intention of reuniting at some point in the future, but I don’t think --”
“I know what you don’t think.” Tears filled his eyes again, and Jazz blinked them away as he willed his heart to stop pounding rapidly against his ribs. “I know you think he - he abandoned me, that he - he doesn’t want anything to do with me, anymore, but --” He licked his lips, trying his best to steady his breathing. “Mitchel, Devin wouldn’t do that. Not to me.”
“It’s been almost a year, Jasper,” Mitchel whispered. His grip on Jazz’s shoulder loosened, his fingers then skimming down the length of Jazz’s back. “Please just - reconsider…”
“You don’t understand,” Jazz insisted, his body vibrating with his desire to dash over to where Ellis stood, to where Devin stood. “He wouldn’t - he wouldn’t just… cut me out of his life and not tell me he doesn’t want to see me, ever again. He’d tell me.”
“Would he, truly?” Mitchel’s voice was soft, quiet, almost lost in the din of the people surrounding them. But Jazz felt the stab of them all the same.
Instead of answering, Jazz turned his attention back to Devin and Ellis. He took in every detail of the outfit Devin was wearing; the not-so-subtle sexuality of it. Just tame enough to be considered acceptable in an gathering like this, and very much something Devin likely wore for Ellis purely for his role as Ellis’s Sidearm.
Had Murdock allowed Devin to work for Ellis again? Questions burned within him, filling the gaps within his ribs that his heart couldn’t squeeze through or pull open no matter how hard it tried. And then his eyes met Ellis’s from across the room.
A quiet whine escaped him at the subtle way Ellis’s expression reformed with recognition. And then Devin - oh god, it was Devin, that had to be Devin - turned his head and looked back at Jazz and Mitchel both. Jazz’s hand ached with the effort not to crush his glass; his body yearning for movement just as Devin tensed beside Ellis, a stricken look on his face before he turned his head away and -
He and Ellis walked away from them, back towards another corner of the ballroom.
“He’d tell me,” Jazz repeated, turning to Mitchel, a tear rolling down his face despite his best efforts to keep them contained. “Right?”