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ashintheairlikesnow · 11 months

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so... how about that jameson au though

(Anon is referencing an AU where Nanda turns up alive, I wrote a short piece on the concept here)

CW: Whumpee returned to whumper, captor bonding, dubcon (mostly implied? mostly), grief

Nanda's thumb and finger rub along the back of Jameson's neck, and he closes his eyes, tipping his chin forward to bare the skin more fully to the familiar touch. The leather seat beneath him feels impossibly soft. The car is new, but the scent of it isn't.

"What do they call you now?" Nanda asks, carefully casual, steering into a turn without signaling. His car, sleek and silver and looking somehow incredibly futuristic and oddly sexual, glides along the road. "In this house I found you in?"

Jameson doesn't look up. He can feel his skin prickling, the hair on his arms standing up. At the same time, he's shivery, feels a warmth pulsing through him. "Jameson," He says. His voice is hoarse. It's always hoarse now. For so long...

"Jameson?" Nanda's voice sounds curious, only curious. His fingernail scrapes lightly along Jameson's nape, edging the softest baby hairs there. Jameson's breath catches. "Like the whiskey?"

He swallows. Custard and blood, a voice he thought he'd never taste again. Vanilla and copper, somehow swimming together. It's not a good taste, but it's one his life revolved around once. A taste he loved, sometimes hated, sometimes both in equal measure. "Yeah." He drops to a whisper. "I was kept in a... a house for a while. I could see these bottles... he'd empty the bottles, and line them up. Jamison Whiskey, always. I thought it-... it sounded like a good name."

Nanda pauses. "... you read the bottles?"

Oh, right. Nanda never knew.

Jameson hitches in a breath. They're still slipping through the city like an eel through ocean, winding around neighborhoods as if avoiding beds of green plants waving in the water. The lights are purple in some spots and bright in others. Jameson wonders if Nanda's taking him-

... what used to be home.

"I read the bottles," He whispers. "I could-... I could always read."

Another long pause. Nanda glances behind him, then pulls over - still without using his turn signal, and that sure hasn't changed. The car's tires crunch along the gravel beside the road, then settle into a rumbling smoothness as they move into grass. Nanda cuts the lights, and leaves he and Jameson sitting in total darkness, without even a streetlight to see by. Only the dim hint of moonlight and stars.

"You weren't supposed to be able to read."

"I... I know. But I can."

"You never told me you could." Nanda's palm is heavy and hot on his neck, now. Jameson twists his fingers into his sweatpants to keep his hands from shaking as Nanda's voice drops low, too. "You lied to me."

"I was-... scared to tell you."

"You should have told me anything. Everything. There shouldn't have been anything I didn't know."

"No, I know, but... fuck. What if you had them take it away?" He looks, now. He finds the courage to raise his head, to turn and look Nanda right in his eyes. They're just a gleam in the night. "I needed it. I, I'm alive because I can read. If I couldn't, and you died, I wouldn't have... been able to read, to, to know-"

"You lied." No anger. Just calm certainty. "To me."

"... yes. I lied." He jerks away from Nanda's hand finally, raking a hand back through his hair, hating it again. It used to be thick, and kind of pretty actually. Used to look good. Even this long after escaping Robert, it still grows in unevenly, different lengths. And some places never grew back at all, so he has to grow it out to cover the bald spots up, but then the uneven bits are obvious, and... "I fucking lied, okay?! I had to protect myself. I had to, to keep safe."

"From me?" Nanda's voice is empty of emotion. It's worse than anger could ever be. "You had to protect yourself from me?"

"More than anyone, you fucking asshole!"

He's going to cry again. He forces the heat of the tears back, lets them turn into a twist of acid anger in his chest alongside his racing heart. He doesn't lower his gaze. He looks Nanda right in the face.

He thought he'd never see this face again.

"You-" His voice cracks, and he fights to get it back. Not to go silent now, when he has to say this, the thing he's always held inside. There's never been a grave he could cry at, there's never been a body to bare his heart to. Not since-

"You could have killed me yourself, and I'd have let you do it." The words come out too quickly, they run together and he's breathless at the end of the sentence. He grabs at Nanda's hand with both of his, holding so tightly he can feel Nanda's bones move, can hear the slightest hiss of breath as he winces. "And you might have. Even if all you did was send me back, they'd wipe it all away again. I'd lose too much, I'd lose you, you shit, and I didn't want to lose you. When you died, I thought-"

"I wasn't dead-"

"I didn't fucking know that!" He can't scream anymore, not like he used to. His voice only turns to wind, the rasp of an oncoming storm. Nanda is a rumble of thunder, and Jameson the leaves shivering on branches about to blow down and die. "If they found me, they'd blame me, and they'd send me back, for being defective, for being a fucking reject, for-... they'd take you away. They'd take you away from me, from my head."

He pulls Nanda's hand to him, leans forward, his forehead resting against the warmth of Nanda's palm, those fingers curved slightly over the top of his head. Like a god giving benediction, maybe. Like he could be lifted up or shoved off a cliff with just one motion.

"I couldn't lose you, not because I wasn't right. I couldn't fucking lose you. If you knew I could read, if you sent me back-... if they sent me back after you died-... they'd take you. I couldn't, I couldn't lose you. I couldn't. You're mine, god damn it, you were mine!"

"Pet-"

"I had to keep you mine." He drops his grip on Nanda's hand, but it doesn't move away, and neither does he. "I had to keep you in my head, because-... because if you were gone, and I didn't know you, then why was I ever here?"

He's talking about Nanda, and he isn't. There's some other face beneath it, another voice, another taste. A smile he'd known from his first memories, a loss he couldn't recall because it had been a loss too great to bear losing.

He doesn't let that other face surface. Some part of him knows the name but he holds it deep, deep down. "I'm what I am because I thought it was okay to lose, to forget, but when you were gone, I, I couldn't, I couldn't lose again. I couldn't forget you again. Don't you fucking understand that?"

Nanda stares at him, slightly wide-eyed, an expression Jameson has never seen before in his handsome, angular face. There's so much more silver in his beard now than there used to be. But they both look so much older, so much different, now.

The silence draws out, between them, and Jameson twists. Lightning threatens. There's no rumble of thunder, only the weight of something about to break overhead and if it does, he'll drown.

"Well?" His voice shakes, but he covers it up with rage. He always covers up his fear with anger. It's the only way he's lived this long. It's safe and easy. "Lost your fucking voice now, all of a sudden? Huh? You gonna fucking say something to me, you piece of shit, you were dead and how goddamn dare you come back and take me like nothing ever happened, like I didn't-... like I didn't have to live without you, for so long without, like I-"

He never finishes the sentence.

"Shut up," Nanda snaps. It's a growl, a snarl, and Jameson thrills to the sound of his voice. His hands are there, they shove Jameson to the side and then back. Nanda hits something along the side of his seat and the back drops flat. Jameson gasps as his head bounces back against the headrest, and then Nanda is on top of him again, yanking his shirt up with a ferocity that feels like the cloth burns along his scarred skin as it goes. His wrists are tangled in the cotton and Nanda grunts, irritated, and leaves it there as he works at Jameson's sweatpants, yanking them down off his hips until he's nearly naked, on his back in the passenger seat of a car, on the side of the road.

"Nanda-"

"I said shut the fuck up-"

Nanda's hand claps over his mouth, and his protests are muffled at first. Then they aren't protests at all, as Nanda's lips are hot against his neck, and then his teeth dig and his tongue works against the reddening skin he's just bitten.

Nanda's hand closes around him, between his legs, and Jameson cries out, all but levitating off the seat into scorching touch. He's dizzy, with the way all his blood suddenly shifts to meet that hand. He can barely think. Nanda's strokes are rough and fast, and Jameson rolls into them, again and again. All his thoughts are washed away by the lust that floods him.

Somewhere under that, though...

He's still afraid.

It could end any second.

It could all have been a dream.

This might have been the wrong choice.

Or it wasn't a choice at all.

Nanda yanks his hand back and Jameson whimpers at the loss, whines like an animal in heat, only to have Nanda grab him and roughly turn him over, throwing him back down. They're closed in this car, the space too small for it. His elbow bangs on something, his feet are pressing up against the rough carpet under the dashboard. But that hand is off his mouth, then. He can breathe, and he can make a sound that isn't entirely human as Nanda's mouth is back on his neck, the heat of his chest against Jameson's shoulder blades, the hardness of him pressed just where Jameson wants it, always wanted it

Didn't always want it-

"Nanda... please-... just wait-"

"I don't wait for you," Nanda whispers against his ear, nips at the shell. He can't stop himself from moaning at the feeling, as broken as that sound is now from his ruined throat. "You wait for me, when I say. You don't tell me when."

Jameson's eyes open, then. He's staring into an expanse of stars through the back windshield, and the sky is so goddamn empty between them, isn't it? Between the tiniest points of light, dead suns, and maybe their planets still revolve around them in the darkness.

"... I was learning," He whispers.

Nanda pauses. His breath is deafening against Jameson's ear. "What?"

"... I was learning how to say when."

He's a planet orbiting a dead star.

"Pet-"

"... I loved you."

"Loved?"

He's crying again. Goddamnit, he's crying again, and his shoulders shake with the sobs he can't hold back any longer. Nanda exhales and drops, weight against him, reassuring and real, alive. "I still love you, but I love-... I love-... I loved that I learned to be-... to b-be Jameson, fuck, stop it stop it stop crying, you shit, you fucking, just stop fucking crying!"

"Sssshhhhh. It's okay." Nanda's voice is a rumble, and the world shakes a little, gentle as a shower of rain. But he can't taste the rain here, not so far away from Allyn.

He can't taste the rain, only copper and sweet.

The stars blur into nothing, they're lost to the darkness when he tries to look through the tears. Even if his vision clears, it isn't even the stars he'd be seeing.

"Nanda... there's someone else."

He only sees the memory of what's already been lost.

#nanda #jameson au #jameson bb #whump #recaptured whumpee #sorta #captor bonding #grief #box boy #box boy universe #bbu #intimate whumper #recovering whumpee

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