Jazz Red's Anomaly

c h a p t e r. 5

"I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself."
― Julie Gregory

Sillily is an actual word and that makes me happy.

chapter 5

Jazz fucked up.

He honestly thinks that he made the celestial mad at him and it hurts.

After finding out he was allergic to the pomegranate smoothie-- pomegranates of all things!-- he not only dragged Cas back to their apartment and made him take the EpiPen in front of him to ensure he actually did it, then made Viv call Ahmik, who was a med student, to double-check that he was okay.

The weirdo let Ahmik into the dorm and he went towards the celestial, asking questions about how he felt and practically gave a 'what can you do' shrug at the fact that Jazz was a bit protective over someone who was now admittedly fine.

His roommate looked sour as he was checked on, staying silent as Mik and Viv became a chaotic swirl of flirting and worry and a weird conversation about dragons, their colors mixing well but becoming loud.

Jazz was already so overwhelmed, his panic attack still alive and kicking and so not helped by the almost-could've-had-a-dead-roommate experience. He wants the feelings to go away, his whole body is buzzing with it and all of the colors and sounds just feel so wrong.

And he's looking at Cas, seeing how silent the celestial is, seeing how he hasn't tried to talk to the musician once, and that felt wrong too.

He was mad.

He had to be.

Back in high school, with some friends that aren't his friends anymore, when someone got mad at him, the whole friend group would give him the silent treatment until he made it up to them.

But once he did, once they were talking, they'd yell too.

Sometimes they'd hit him.

And he knows that that was wrong. He knows that it was toxic. He knows that real friends-- friends like Viv and Mik-- don't treat each other like that.

But the broken part of him, the one sneering inside of his mind says, "You deserve it. You deserve to feel like this." and Jazz ends up believing it.

Ends up agreeing.

Once someone is told something over and over and over again, it becomes ingrained into them. Part of them. Part of what hurts, part of what keeps them up so late, part of what makes him too much.

So he's scared.

He's scared because Cas seems like an amazing, kind person. He seems like someone Jazz would like to know for a long time. He seems like a safe choice of who he'd hand his heart over to.

But what if he's like those friends?

What if he can't control his anger?

What if Jazz fucks up too much, more than just this time, and that anger becomes more deserved, more defined into realization that the celestial no longer wanted to be around him?

That was a big part of the musician's anxiety, feeling like no one wants him and that he bothers everyone, that eventually they all leave if given the chance.