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jeanbie · 7 months ago

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ALL THE TIME (IF YOU WERE MINE) ★ masterlist.

pairing: jake x reader

warnings: explicit sexual content, human!fem!reader, porn with a lot of plot, establishing feelings, reader's nickname is "Spellman/Spelly", size kink, face sitting, finger fucking, manhandling, begging, riding, dirty talk, squirting, whatever you call this, breeding kink, creampie | wc: 19k

note: i became obsessed with jake + spelly ᨳ ˶ᵔᴗᵔ˶) thank u for the love on fantasize + i hope u all love the development between our fav dummy avatar and our fav scientist!!

★ ⏤ sequel to fantasize

⏤ Now that feelings are known and the lucky chance to be alone in the lab together arises, Jake wants to go even further than he did before.

“Hey, marine, where’s your log from last night?”

Of course, the first thing out of Grace’s mouth when Jake rolls himself into the front workspace is something to do with video logs. Jake does everything he can to stop himself from groaning in her face and presents her a smile, one that she can no doubt see right through when he appears in the dim daylight falling through the windows.

“It’s not there? Must have deleted itself.”

Grace’s eyebrows raise. “Are you trying to tell me that the camera just…deleted the footage? I have everyone else’s logs on here except for yours. Conveniently for you…”

“Can’t even make a log right,” comments Norm — Jake had almost forgotten all about the eldest Spellman and turns his head to see him, and quite frankly, even just looking at Norm this morning feels like a silent victory, the excited feeling of thrilled anticipation bubbling in Jake’s stomach.

“Ask your sister,” Jake says in reply, almost laughing at loud at the contorted face of disgust that appears in replacement of Norm’s sneer, “she saw me last night.”

“Here we go,” Norm sighs.

Luckily for Norm, Grace buts in: “Enough, you skxawngs. Just make a log while it’s all still fresh.” She pauses then, and pulls out one of her beady eyes to stare intently at Jake, “It is still fresh, right, Jake?”

“Fresh as a daisy, doc,” Jake replies, but his eyes have already begun wandering around the lab for the notably absent scientist he enjoys seeing the most in the mornings — the same scientist he fucked stupid last night and hasn’t stopped thinking about since.

Considering your unbelievably obvious feelings for Jake, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he managed to entice you out to the little forest behind the shack, and yet he still can’t believe that it even happened. There’s a phantom tingle in his stomach as he thinks it over — did it even count when he did things in his avatar?

Everybody has noticed your interest in Jake, including Jake himself, and yet a strange doubt gnaws at his mind as his eyes wander across the lab, seeking you out, looking for signs of you on the counter or out the windows. More than anything, he hopes he hasn’t completely severed his chances with you.

What if you woke up and regretted all of it? What if you woke up and despised him all of a sudden? That probably wouldn’t surprise him, since there’s plenty of anti-Jake sentiment being spread in the lab right now, and he’s never had too much of a good thing before it slips away somehow.

Still, there’s a small crack inside of Jake that remains open with the possibility that maybe everything is fine.

Jake doesn’t know how long he’s been staring out the window for before Grace speaks again, but when he looks over at her, he’s grateful that she’s not looking at him already to catch him in his daydreaming.

“I don’t hear you making that log, marine,” she says carefully, her eyes once again glued to her microscope. It’s a wonder she doesn’t just fall asleep next to the damn thing.

Jake tries his best to look casual as he rolls to the end of the lab and fiddles with the camera, asking, “Where’s everyone else?”

Grace shuffles and swaps one of the samples under the microscope. “Outside. I sent Little Spellman out to collect a sample from the fyìpmaut tree that we noticed on our first outdoor sweep. I think in the next few days, we might even get a bit of fruit from that sucker.”

“That’s a squid fruit tree, by the way,” adds Norm, and Jake casts him a filthy glare that Norm unfortunately doesn’t see since he’s got his nose buried in some papers.

“I know that,” Jake says in the calmest voice he can.

Does Norm forget that Jake goes through what burns down to a routine of drills with Neytiri on almost everything and anything the woman can think of that can be found on Pandora? From his, quote, “valuable field research”, Jake thinks he’s learned more about Pandora and what you can find in the forest than Norm has in three years.

“I sent Chacón out with her so she can stretch her legs,” Grace continues, having no energy to waste on trying to get Jake and Norm to coexist peacefully. “I don’t think she even goes outside unless it's to fly, so it’ll do her some good.”

Jake looks out the window again. He wishes he could at least see you — maybe that would make the twisting discomfort disappear. He tries very desperately to think about last night again, running his memory over every detail until he knows for sure that he wasn’t overanalysing or even imagining the entire thing.

He likes you. You like him. He fucked you in the forest. He liked it a lot. You sounded like you liked it a lot. You looked sad to see him disappear before going inside. He didn’t imagine any of that, did he?

Grace’s chair creaks menacingly and it makes Jake switch on the little camera quickly and start listing off whatever he did with Neytiri the day before. It would be hilarious if he were to accidentally mention the fact that he stretched out Norm’s sister and filled her up with cum, but Jake has the decency to know that the timing isn’t right.

Plus, he kind of wants Norm to figure it out for himself.

As he recites his day, all he can think about is how he wants Norm to find out — when he’s out on a pathetic patrol around the shack, maybe he’ll get a whiff near the forest; god, Jake hopes you’re walking with a goddamn limp just to rub salt in the wound. There are too many ways, too many possibilities, and Jake has to work overtime to fight the grin that wants to appear on his face.

The story he’s sharing about tracking yerik through their shit isn’t funny at all, and he’d hate to have to try and explain why he’s smirking while he’s telling it.

Jake can’t think of anything else to say to drag on the log that Grace apparently wants so badly, so he calls it a day and switches off the camera. He then steals another glance out the window and is absolutely delighted when he can actually see you this time.

You’re sprinting with Trudy back towards the lab while frantically looking up above your head. Jake can’t even see the sky from where he’s sitting, and suddenly feels a pang of pity for you for having to sit in here until Grace essentially gives you the green light to go outside.

No wonder the stars had been so fascinating last night — you can’t see anything through these frosted glass panes that the science department were forced to call windows.

Jake feels his heart pounding in his chest when the sound of the doorway pressurising fills the room, followed by Trudy’s relieved sigh as she whips off her exo-pack and takes a deep breath of air. But he’s not looking at her as desperately as he is at you, and Jake doesn’t know if it’s the afterglow of fucking you last night or if it’s two months' worth of feelings rushing back towards him like a tidal wave, but you look so beautiful that it leaves him sitting there dumbly, taking it all in.

“Fucking rain,” Trudy sighs, immediately b-lining for the fridge. Since they first got here, the fridge has expanded in size after a few trips back to Hells Gate for emergency supplies or board meetings Grace couldn’t get herself out of, and now the fridge can store beers that Trudy is all too pleased about cracking open.

“Good timing,” notes Grace as she turns in her chair. “You get it?”

“Yep, here,” comes your voice, and Jake watches quietly as you hand Grace her priceless sample. “The ground near that tree is really wet, though. If you want more samples, I won’t be going until the rain stops.”

“That tree won't bear fruit until the end of the week, maybe,” Grace replies, waving her hand dismissively. “…This is a good sample, Spellman, great eye.”

“Thanks,” you laugh in reply.

Your back is still facing Jake, and each second you waste looking away from him makes Jake feel more impatient to see your eyes on him again. He watches very observantly as you stretch your arms up with a small groan, the bottom of your tank rising as you reach for the ceiling and iron out the aches in your bones.

Grace looks at you for a minute and her brows pinch. You clearly don’t notice as you turn in Norm’s general direction and make a comment about how terrible his notes were last night, but Grace doesn’t stop eye-balling you until she throws a short glance at Jake and narrows her eyes.

He says nothing, dares not even move until Grace raises her eyebrows as if it will clear the calculating expression off her face. She sets the sample down on the counter and leans her weight on her elbow, reaching into her pocket for a cigarette.

“Hey, you’ve got a crazy ass rash on your chest, Spellman,” Grace says suddenly, and you whip around to look at her so quickly that Jake has to refrain from sighing in pity. “What happened?”

You peer down at your chest and Jake knows you’ve remembered and by now noticed the mark on your chest that is shaped like Jake’s mouth. For a second, there’s a tense silence, and Jake feels his stomach turning, half out of anxiousness and half thrill — could this be? Could this be the moment everyone finds out?

He gives Norm a single look, but he’s not even interested in what’s being said, for he’s rearranging the notes he’s been reading and turns to his binder of other random papers.

“One of the samples Jake found for me kinda made me go all itchy,” you lie, very flawlessly too, and finally, you look at Jake.

It’s as if a volt of electricity has been sent through him — Jake has no idea what has suddenly made him feel this way, but something tells him it might be last night; might be the fact that you’re the most beautiful person in the room, on Pandora, in the entire universe. His mouth goes dry.

“Fngapsutxwll?” Grace asks, and when you look back with a gentle and clueless nod, she frowns and sneers at Jake, “I told you to avoid bringing her carnivorous plants, Jake!”

“I didn’t know it was gonna make her break out in hives,” Jake replies. The lie is so natural that Grace scoffs loudly in reply.

He hasn’t even brought you any fngapsutxwlls, and yet here he is, lying about it just for the sake of protecting this secret that more than anything, Jake wants your brother to know about.

“Where is it?” asks Grace. “I need to document this.”

“I told you that taking samples from Jake was a bad idea,” Norm pipes up, giving you a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile.

“Oh, quit bouncin’ my dick, Spellman,” Jake groans, looking away from you with reluctance when you peer over at him.

“You’re a danger to this department. And a danger to my sister.”

“Shut up, Norm,” you huff, marching towards Jake and wrapping your arms around his head in a way that somehow smushes the side of it against your chest. Hey, Jake’s not complaining — he knows this is your own slight rebellion against your brother, but he will relish in this feeling and enjoy the displeasure that writes its way onto Norm’s face.

“Your sister’s quite capable of making her own decisions around here,” Grace says, her voice tired suddenly. “And the very last thing I wanna do is listen to you fucking assholes fighting. It’s actually boring me. If you’re going to keep at it, I’ll send you back to the Gate, Norm, don’t tempt me. If it weren’t for the fact that this jarhead is days away from becoming one of the People, then believe me, he’d be back there faster than you can say Eywa. So knock it the fuck off.”

Message received: Norm all but deforms into a ball and rolls away to the bunks, with nothing to say for himself besides a disgruntled sigh as he disappears. Jake studies the sound of his footsteps as they stomp down the length of the metal corridor, but then he tunes his senses back to the feeling of your heartbeat lightly thudding against his temple, your hands cradling his head like a baby.

He savours the feeling for a long minute before pushing the boat out and snaking his hand up the back of your leg, pulling you closer against him.

For a second, Grace glances over at Jake once more and then gives you a warning look. “And don’t encourage them, Spelly, you’re better than that.”

“Sorry,” you laugh, and Jake melts into the soft curve of your breasts like a cold animal craving warmth. Grace spares another fleeting moment looking at you with her menacing beady eye, the same she likes to give Jake whenever he does something slightly wrong, and then she turns back to face her microscope, giving Jake the opening to press his fingernails into your bare legs and look up at you.

The expression on your face when you peer down at him makes a smile bloom across his mouth before he can even stop it. He tilts his head back appreciatively and takes it all in; the look of slight shyness on your face and the soft yet slightly cheeky grin where your mouth is.

Little Spellman, his woman — decorated with the imprint of his mouth on your tit, a kind of ethereal glow on your skin that he knows he helped put there.

For a moment, despite all of the thoughts whirling around in Jake’s head, he can’t think of anything to say to you. All he can think of saying is something absurdly stupid about last night, but he’s acutely aware of Grace on the other side of the room, and Trudy floating in and out of the hallway as if she can’t quite decide on where to go.

Slowly, and then all at once, you unravel yourself from Jake and push away to lean your lower back against the lab desk.

His eyes wander all over your face before you ask, “Sleep well, Sully?”

He sighs from the back of his throat, like he’s thinking, and then relaxes slightly.

“Best night’s sleep in a while,” he replies, folding his arms, watching the way your eyes glimpse down at the very slight curve of his biceps — they’re nothing on his avatar’s physique, but he finds with amazement that you somehow still find something to look at with fondness.

He has no idea why you like him so much, or why you’re still looking at him like that despite having been tangled with his avatar just last night. On one hand, he knows it’s flattering that somebody likes everything he doesn’t about himself, from his boring personality to his dumbness to his disability. On the other hand, Jake knows that you could do ten thousand times better than with him — even if he factors in the Na’vi body that he suddenly feels more comfortable in than his real one.

“I didn’t even hear you get back in,” Trudy says, deciding to stick in this part of the lab rather than enter the dark lair of sulk that Norm has channeled in the bunks. She drags one of the low stools over with an obnoxious screech, and Jake has to tell himself it’s fine.

He likes Trudy, likes that she’s a good friend and takes his side on things, but right now, he just wants her to go away; he wants everyone to go away so that he can steal five extra seconds with you before he has to roll back to the link unit and find Neytiri.

“Well, I thought I’d be considerate and roll by everyone’s bunk extra quietly,” Jake replies. “You guys were out like lights.”

“I feel like all I do is sleep around here,” Trudy mutters.

“You’re welcome to join us on our study later,” Grace offers.

But Trudy cringes. “Can’t say I’ll be much help in a lab, doc.”

“No, we’re collecting wet samples later,” Grace explains. “The rain tank will refill our recycled water, but I need to patch up the reserve tank with Norm while we’re out. Little Spellman here will take cuttings from the forest out back, and we could use a lookout just in case any unwanted visitors join us.”

“I didn’t know about this,” you say confusedly. “When did we decide this?”

“Just now, I decided,” replies Grace. “While Jake’s out doing his shit, we need to do ours. Hope you packed your raincoat, Spelly.”

Paying no attention at all to the string of groans that come from your direction, Jake looks out the window again and gives himself a few seconds to think.

If he manages to land a clean kill today with Neytiri, then he’ll be choosing his own ikran tomorrow. It is the single most important part of becoming an Omatikaya warrior, according to what he’s deduced from Neytiri’s repeated stress of the whole rite, and the pressing necessity of Jake perfecting his kills has been made his top priority by two women in his life; the woman showing him the ropes and the scientist beating his ass if he misses a video log.

But Jake has carved out a part of his mind and left it open in your name. More than anything else, he wants to stay here and watch you frantically running around in the rain cutting little leaves, talking shit about cells, looking awkwardly at where he fucked you last night in the very forest Grace is making you turn into a new study.

On top of all that, Jake wants to be there when Norm takes his first whiff of the seeds planted for Jake’s revenge — oh, god, how he wants to see the sinking look of realisation on Norm’s face when he catches Jake’s scent all over his sister…

“Why are you still here, marine?” cuts Grace’s annoyed voice as he glances to the side and sees that the scientist is glaring at him like he’s pa’li shit on her shoes. “Don’t you have animals to hunt?”

Jake sighs through his nose and glances back at you. He wants to do what you asked of him, to tell you he likes you so much it’s making him go insane, how last night was incredible, how he wished you had rolled over and seen him before he went to sleep. But he doesn’t. Now’s not the time, and Jake all of a sudden thinks that he’s behaving like a freak and he moves to roll himself towards the link unit at the far of the link chamber.

As he busies himself by flicking all the necessary switches and deliberately taking longer than normal to get everything ready, he keeps his ears trained on the conversation happening behind him.

“We’ll have to work overtime on the new samples,” Grace says as she slides yet another sample under the microscope. “Parker’s calling us in for a routine meeting and inspection of our data tomorrow. Jake’s doing his Omatikaya training, but Parker will be expecting results to justify the rest of us coming all the way out here.”

“What, all of us are going?” Norm has decided to reappear from the bunks, much to Jake’s dismay.

Grace hums — she probably nods too, knowing her, but Jake makes it a point not to look as though not to blow his cover of listening in. “If I have to go, you guys will suffer with me.”

Jake feels the cavern in his chest hollow out even more.

“So…Jake’s just staying here?” Norm asks, confused. “…Is that safe?”

“You worried about me, Norm?” Jake calls.

Norm probably frowns — yup: Jake turns and sees that sinister scowl on his face. “Somehow, you’d find a way, just like always. But we’re all the way up in the Hallelujah Mountains.”

“Funnily enough, I knew that, Norm,” says Grace.

“If something happens, Jake will need someone,” Norm continues, and for once, Jake actually agrees. If something were to happen with the link unit or the pressurising system, Jake wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing any of it — that is if he even got out of the unit without falling or dying.

But now that Norm has mentioned it, Jake’s body fills with dread. Is Norm suggesting that he stay behind with Jake? Then his thoughts spiral: did Norm already know? Was he planning a whole thing to confront Jake or get him back? Norm didn’t strike Jake as the type to outright murder somebody, but hey, he wouldn’t put it past him to try somehow.

Grace contemplates the idea for a moment and takes her time glancing over at Jake and then back at Norm. “Good point. You stay here, then.”

“Can I stay instead?” you interrupt, and Jake looks at you so quickly he fears he might get whiplash as a result.

Grace eyeballs you curiously, as does Norm.

“Why?” Norm questions in a rather curt tone.

“No offence, but I haven’t met Parker since our orientation in the Avatar Program when we were students, and pretty much all of our conclusive research is made up of your notes, anyway. I can stay here and manage the lab, continue my own research, and make sure Jake gets in and out of the unit alright once he’s done.” You glance at Grace for good measure, “I’m reliable. But when it comes to talking to the guys in charge, you might be better off with Norm.”

If Grace thinks what you’ve said is suspicious, then she doesn’t show it. After all, you’re right, and everybody in the lab knows it. Jake, for one, knows how reliable you can be around the lab.

He’s not biased, but he knows that you’re a far more trustworthy scientist than Norm is when it comes to checking the systems, keeping the lab clean and tidy, doing all of your chores and completing your logs, and in general, keeping the entire shack functioning as normal while everybody else is busy.

He also knows how shy you can get, particularly with your work. Not even a few hours ago, you had tried to downplay your interest in the Na’vi to justify Norm’s graduation into the Avatar Driver program, and he can’t think of a single time you’ve told somebody that their research isn’t as important as your own. In fact, Jake isn’t even one hundred percent sure what you’re interested in when you’re not aiding everybody else’s research.

More importantly than any of that, Jake knows that you staying behind in the shack while everybody else flies out for an overnight at Hell’s Gate is particularly advantageous. It spells the perfect setting for the next stage of his so-called ‘revenge’, although he’s beginning to believe that soon enough, Jake will be fucking you for more than the thrill of it pissing Norm off.

Jake blinks and finds you looking at him, as if trying to coax a word or two of support from his mouth. He throws you a simple smile and angles his head towards Grace.

“It’s a no-brainer who I’d rather be spending a night with,” he says. Then he immediately cringes on the inside — that came out horribly wrong, no matter how truthful it may have actually been.

But still, Grace doesn’t think twice about the otherwise nasty implications of his words. Instead, she shrugs and turns to the janky coffee machine that is tucked nearby to a selection of mason jars by the mini microwave.

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying you willingly want to spend a whole night in this remote shack with Jake?” Norm asks, looking at you as if you’ve grown a third head. “Alone?”

“What would be so bad about it?” you reply casually. “He’ll hardly be here, anyway. Besides, if he pisses me off, I’ll just kick him out of his chair and leave him somewhere.”

Jake laughs, “Rude? I thought you liked my wheelchair.”

“Whatever,” Grace announces, just before you get the chance to reply with something witty to make Jake laugh in return. “We’ll be back as soon as the day breaks. Chacón says she needs VFR to get through the mountains, so we’ll play it safe. As long as you can hold out until then, Spelly, then go ahead.”

The sound of the link unit whirring to life makes Jake jump slightly, and he reluctantly glances away to punch in the data on the screen while the rest of the lab busy themselves in their usual routine.

Jake can’t believe it. He could not have predicted a more perfect result.

Tomorrow, there’ll be nobody else besides you and him.

It is quite literally perfect news.

As Jake hears Norm begin his on-brand rant over how you should be cautious around an idiot like himself, he allows himself the simple pleasure of grinning wickedly to himself, feigning innocence as he very carefully looks at you again out the corner of his eye.

After a while of fighting off your brother, you eventually look back at Jake and smile, so radiantly and mischievously that he immediately knows that whatever he’s thinking, you’re thinking too.

He heaves himself up and lets Grace think she’s God incarnated by helping him nestle down in the unit, all while he savours the last few minutes he has letting his mind be swarmed with thoughts of tomorrow — thoughts of him with you wrapped in his arms, nobody around to watch, nothing in the world to keep him from claiming you as his own all over again.

Following Grace’s orders isn’t often a challenge for you — in fact, being given instructions on what to do has become a reliable part of your daily schedule, and it just so happened that you did a lot of what Grace asked without any fuss at all. But right now, you’re having a hard time understanding just why taking samples of a few wet leaves is in any way necessary.

Since earlier that morning, the rain has transformed into a torrential downpour; the raincoat covering your entire body is drenched through, the hood tightened so intensely around your face that it shadows the outline of your exo-pack comically. Still, you practically glare down at the pamtseowll taking lashes from the rain, its catty appearance looking pathetically sad as you snip a segment off and secure it in the sample bag, huffing as you go along.

Everybody in the laboratory has their own interests, their own research to conduct. Grace has been working on a dense study of forest fauna since you arrived on Pandora, and now Norm has decided to work on a branch of research concerning the fauna and its changes when in contact with rainfall.

So far, he’s accumulated a valuable cache of research, and yet, here you are, collecting his samples while he stands on his blue tip-toes and helps Grace fix the faulty water reserve tank.

You can’t even think of the last time anybody offered to help you out with your own research. In a way, the only helpful person has been Jake, and that’s only by a stretch. The variety of cuttings or entire uprooted plants that he brings you after his hours and hours spent on the ground and in the village have been the subjects of your research, but dying plants flattened and prodded in a lab only communicate so much at a time.

Being out here, in the open field, would be the most beneficial if it weren’t for Grace’s restrictive ‘field hours’.

With a frown, you pop open a small sample tube and carefully angle it underneath another pamtseowll, catching a generous amount of rainwater and firmly sealing it closed. You’ve snipped and sliced a dozen different plants, shadowed by Trudy and her chorus of equally unamused sighs, before Grace and Norm successfully patch up the tank and join you.

“Felinafolia ferrugenia,” says Grace as she stands over your shoulder. She looks annoyingly refreshed considering the onslaught of rain, dressed in a large raincoat of her own but with her legs on display, her shorts the only clothing she appreciates when in her avatar. “Cat ear. Another great sample, Spellman.”

You grunt in reply. Based on the way Grace busies herself with one of the starfishing pxiwll plants instead of replying, you predict she hasn’t heard your complaints, and so you stomach another sigh and crouch over another plant.

“How many cuttings do you want, Norm?” you ask, teeth chattering in the cold.

“As many as we can before all the bags fill up,” Grace replies instead. She jerks her head towards the deeper forest and suggests moving inwards. And honestly, you’d want to, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s currently prowling towards the same lay of forest that Jake took you to last night, and the nerves root you to the spot.

It’s the very last place you’d rather visit with your boss, your brother, and a friendly yet sometimes intimidating aviator pilot. Your eyes close in on the familiar jag of the rock, feeling your heartbeat tremble as Grace approaches it without a care in the world.

Trudy passes by you with a confused curve of her eyebrows, already stepping in Grace’s oversized footprints and making her way into the concealed cover of trees and branches, and it is only when Norm drops to a crouch beside you that you finally tear your eyes from the rock and look at him.

Norm’s eyebrows are low, a ripple deepening across his forehead as he stares at you, like one would a tricky puzzle in the newspaper. His eyes flicker up and down the raincoat analytically, his lip curling in distaste before he inhales, nostrils flaring, and bites out, “Why do you smell like that?”

Your heart is hammering so loudly that it makes your chest ache, and around the gigantic lump in your throat, you gape at Norm and manage to ask, “Like what?”

“Like… I don’t know, all weird,” he continues, looking perplexed and disturbed at the same time. “Like. Musky. Like… No. I don’t know, but it’s weird. I don’t even know what you smell like, but it’s not normal.”

Without having to put too much thought into it, you’re confident that you know exactly what and who you smell like. A certain oversized ex-marine who Norm just so happens to hate all of a sudden.

It shocks you how scared Norm’s assessment makes you feel. Of course, you knew that the Na’vi had an incredibly heightened sense of smell, and had that fact confirmed yesterday with Jake sniffing the damp spot between your legs, but you somehow didn’t expect Norm to be able to smell any difference on you.

This is exactly what Jake wanted to happen; you gauge Norm’s facial expressions for a long time, trying to figure out if he’s made any connections yet, but he continues to sniff at you in disgust, permanently confused by what the hell it could even be.

“Are you sure it’s not just the raincoat?” you ask lamely, taking a pointed look down at the waxy coat enveloping you. “It was just in one of the supply boxes, it probably smells really weird since it’s been in storage for a while.”

Norm inches closer and takes a massive inhale.

“I guess it could be the coat,” Norm decides slowly, watching you as you hover for a moment before stepping off to follow Grace and Trudy. All of a sudden, being over there is better than being here, being interrogated by Norm.

Still, he doesn’t get the hint and he says as he follows you, “But it’s just strange. It’s so strong.”

“If you keep going on about it, it’s gonna hurt my feelings,” you tell him, hoping that he might shut up and spare you the anxiety of him figuring it out. “You trying to say I stink?”

“Yeah,” Norm replies dumbly. “Because you do. You usually smell fine, I know what body wash you use because I steal it all the time.”

“Right,” you drawl, peering at him from the corner of your eye as you both near the others. Trudy tosses her head over her shoulder and startles at the sight of Norm, as if she forgot he was even there and slowly creeping up behind her.

For a moment, you wish you had the ability to forget about Norm, but even when he crouches next to Grace and assists in marvelling over a rather average-looking moss blanket, you can’t help but anxiously stare at both of them, as if waiting for something more to be said.

It’s not as if you regret any of last night. On the contrary, you think it might have altered your body chemistry and made you more desperate. While your first tumble with Jake hadn’t been in the way you expected, or even in the form of Jake you were most used to, there’s nothing you can say to make you convince yourself that it was a mistake. Since when did mistakes feel that good?

Your embarrassingly long crush on Jake has been dragged out until now, and quite frankly, the last thing you want to do is suppress the elation you feel about finally taking the next step with him; to finally hold his attention, to be someone he actually feels interested in.

To be “his woman”, to hear Jake say that you were one of the only things ever keeping him from throwing his life into being Na’vi felt like a dream last night, and even now, in his absence, all you can think about is how badly you want him back here, how badly you want him.

But not at the cost of total humiliation. If Norm were to turn around right now and accuse you of the truth, you genuinely believe you might die from embarrassment. It’s one thing sleeping with Jake Sully, but it’s another thing entirely to be found out for sleeping with Jake’s avatar.

Is it even safe?

Instead of helping Grace and Norm in their collection of samples, you fall deeper and deeper into your spiral of thoughts. You’re so deeply immersed in them that several minutes go by and Grace and Norm have moved a few feet closer to the rock, studying the moss that creeps up the jagged edges, moss you felt on your back last night. And yet, you still don’t startle out of your thoughts — at least not until a dark shadow falls over you, and Trudy jumps around with wide eyes before groaning with annoyance.

“How the hell did you get here so quietly?” Trudy snaps, and the distress in her voice makes you turn your head over your shoulder. When you see a strangely slender blue waist in front of your eyes, you jump too and look up to find Jake’s face hidden in a slight shadow.

When he looks away from Trudy and finds your eyes behind the glare on the exo-pack, his mouth widens into a giant smirk, and despite the shivering cold of the stormy weather, you feel your body flush with a sudden warmth.

God, sleeping on the fact of what you did with Jake did not make the yearning go away.

Jake shrugs. “At least I know my training’s paying off.”

At that, Grace acknowledges Jake standing behind you and turns to face him with her hands on her thighs. “Oh. Marine. Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?”

“I’m done for the day,” he announces, his grin widening, if it were even possible. You take the moment to soak up the sight of him in his Omatikaya attire — the rain sliding across his wide torso, looking a shade darker in the dim light, the very faint glimmer of his freckles creating a stitch work of light across his skin. When Grace asks why, he tells her, “I’m ready.”

Grace gasps — she sounds happy, and after your eyes linger for a fleeting second on the wet cloth hanging across Jake’s crotch, you turn to face her.

“Really?” she asks.

Jake nods. “My iknimaya is tomorrow morning.”

Grace laughs disbelievingly and rises to stand, her hands falling to her hips while Norm remains all but glued to the floor, his eyes glazed with envy as he glances at Jake.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Jake!” Grace laughs again. “Really. Well done.”

“Nice work, man!” Trudy adds, nodding her head at Jake. “You a tough warrior now, huh?”

You hear Jake snickering behind you, the noise making you shudder. Thankfully, it’s still raining, so you hope it looks like you’re cold rather than on edge about the avatar behind you.

“You walked all the way here to tell us that?” asks Grace, sounding genuinely curious as she turns back to Norm and quite literally yanks up a whole plant. “Why?”

“Nah. Neytiri wanted to show me the basic route for tomorrow morning,” Jake explains. You can hear him shuffling around behind you, but you’ve become rooted to the spot facing away from him. “Tsu’tey pretty much hates me. He’ll be gagging for the chance to abandon me before we even get to the rookery.”

Grace makes a noise of agreement, which launches her into a serious discussion of how Jake needs to respect Tsu’tey more in order to receive more respect in return. From behind you, Jake groans playfully, although lets Grace continue her presentation on why Tsu’tey is a good leader (not that Jake ever said he wasn’t), and you intensely watch Norm lean his arm on the wedge of rock you recognise from last night until you become aware of the fact that the rain has slowed — or at least above you, it has.

Craning your head up, you notice Jake’s hands hovering over your head, as if acting as some kind of personal umbrella. He’s still looking at Grace when you peer at his face, but instinctively, like he felt you looking, his eyes flicker downwards to yours and he smiles again, his eyes halving into curves.

Yep. The yearning has definitely persisted.

“Don’t stay too long, Jake, you’ll have to take yourself back down to the village before the storm picks up,” Grace says after her rant has stretched for at least five minutes on the value of Tsu’tey’s comradeship.

“Yeah. Though Neytiri says it’s almost passed,” Jake replies, adjusting his footing behind you, his hands unmoving.

“Is Neytiri here?” you decide to ask suddenly. Hey, you can’t help but feel curious about the woman who has been helping Jake get to where he currently is.

You somehow miss the confused scrunch of Jake’s eyebrows, as though he finds the question completely irrelevant.

“She’s…around,” he says. “On her ikran somewhere. Practically left me all by myself.”

“Well, I imagine she has better things to do,” says Grace, sparing you the humiliation of coming up with a reason for even bringing her up in the first place, other than to just be nosey. You picture Neytiri stalking the lot of you from a perch with her ikran, trying to figure out if the Sky People keeping Jake’s human body alive are worthy to be left alone in the beautiful Ayram alusìng.

The mention of Neytiri seems to set something off inside Grace, who was apparently looking for any excuse to talk about the village again. She turns around on her haunches and begins another lengthy discussion on the Omatikaya and their ikran, all while Norm scowls into his sample pouches and Trudy steps away from you all to glare at the unassuming grey sky.

You are uncomfortably aware of Jake’s figure still looming over you, his hands sheltering you from the spitting rain and his tail occasionally curling around his leg to jab into your waist playfully.

There’s nothing to fear with Jake, nothing to fear of his potential interest in other people, and you banish the thoughts before they take up permanent residence. You’re better than that. And besides, if Jake didn’t really want you, he wouldn’t be acting like a Na’vi umbrella just for your convenience, wouldn’t be having so much trouble stopping himself from grinning down at you every once in a while.

A gust of cool air pushes its way through the forest, and you shudder dramatically, hoping it might guilt Grace out of the trees and back into the labs. Instead, she snorts, tells you to suck it up, and snaps at Norm for manhandling a sample, all before you feel a warmth surge behind you and two large, blue arms securing around your body.

Before you can even process it, you’re between Jake’s thighs, the large and solid expanse of his torso flat against your back and his cheek against the wet waxy material of your hood. You peer around the side of your coat to find his face, almost jumping when his big golden eyes are staring back at you.

“Don’t catch a cold, Spelly,” Jake says, his taut muscles tightening around you. He smirks at the fleeting look you throw in the group’s direction and purses his lips in an effort not to laugh at how funny everything is. How Norm is leaning against the rock he fucked you on and has no idea. How beautifully hilarious it is to see.

“Famous last words,” you reply, teeth chattering.

“Then go inside, grumpy,” Grace huffs, waving her arm in a flamboyant gesture, “Sully, walk Spellman back before you head to the village, will you?”

Jake shrugs, your body moving with him as he does so. It feels strange to be wrapped up in his arms so openly, with no rush or thrill of being caught through a window or a sniff. Norm looks purple with rage as he glares daggers into Jake’s face, though Jake’s barely looking at Norm, not when his much more favourable sibling is so close and pretty in his face like this.

He very gracefully moves to a stand, his hands moving from your body with reluctance before he reaches out, fingers widening and curling as he grabs for your own. Shyly, you reach to take it, hearing Norm mutter something not-so-graceful under his breath and stepping in Jake’s shadow to follow as he makes his way with you back towards the lab.

The muddy ground squelches under Jake’s feet, but with the way he walks so carelessly, it’s as though he has already become acclimatised to the Na’vi ways. And, you have to admit, he sports the village clothing with class and style.

Jake’s beads clink together as he turns his head in an incline to see you.

“Tell me it was everything I hoped for,” he says suddenly, and as you spot the cocky little smirk on his mouth, you laugh and shake your head, already knowing what he’s asking about.

“Norm said I smelled weird. I tried my best not to be offended.”

Jake sniggers, “That man has no idea.” Looking pleased, Jake swings your intertwined hands and adds quickly, “And you just smell like me. I like it.”

“You would like it.”

“In the village, couples smell like each other all the time,” he says, a bit too casually, and you sideways glance at him. “Like, to lay claim.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about laying claims when the only other man I see on a daily basis is literally my brother,” you remind him.

“Yeah. But, still. The idea,” Jake shrugs. “Isn’t it nice?”

The both of you round the corner of the lab and disappear from sight of the scientists back in the forest, now totally concealed behind the front of the lab and the drab look of the short grass and mud. On the bright side, the rain is slowing considerably, which is probably the only reason why you’re not cringing when you have to look up at Jake just to see his face.

“You know Neytiri has zero interest in me, right?”

You refrain from groaning. “I know, Jake.”

“Okay, ‘cause maybe it wasn’t obvious, so I’m just saying—”

“Let’s not… We’re not gonna do that, okay?” you say, cringing at the fact you brought it up in the first place. “I get it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Jake,” you laugh, pausing. What can you even say?

He shifts slightly. “I told you that scientists are more my thing, and you know, what I meant by that was—”

“I know,” you groan, waving your hands desperately, “and I believe you. Don’t make this weird, Jake.”

Mercifully, he surrenders, holding up his hands to announce his resignation from the point. For a few more seconds, he stares at you, assesses every flinch or twitch of features on your face, and seems relieved when he finds nothing that indicates you’re upset with him.

Better than that, he completely sets aside the conversation; he smiles genuinely, as close to innocent as Jake can get, and then his eyes avert to the ground and he runs his tongue across the inside of his cheek.

Before the silence stretching between you can fester into anything else, you announce your leave with a heavy sigh and twist towards the doors.

“Get out of here, big guy,” you tell him, already punching in one of the codes to access the pressure chamber. “I’ll try and stay up to see you tonight.”

“Yeah right,” he teases, still in the same position you left him in. “My sleepy girl. Couldn’t manage it last night, I was gone like fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen precious minutes of sleep,” you say, watching Jake’s grin widen as the doors slide open and in you go. There’s no need for a goodbye; you’ll see him again later.

As soon as you’re inside of the lab again, you waste zero time in climbing out of the horribly drab coat and leaving it to dry in a cupboard that Grace hangs wet clothes in from time to time. The wax won’t run properly through the laundry machines, and so you leave it there, thankful that no rain seeped through to your clothes underneath, and shudder at the temperature change once back inside the strange comfort of the lab.

Dutifully, you place a bag of samples next to one of the microscopes, and you’re about to fish out a towel to head straight for the showers when you catch a glimpse of something blue outside the window — Jake, bending over to peer into the lab, tapping his finger on the glass to get your attention.

You look at him questioningly. Then, you watch in disbelief and amusement as Jake grins, puts his fisted hands down by his abdomen and then lifts them up to his shoulders. It takes a moment of confusion before it clicks — this motherfucker is asking you to lift up your shirt.

Jake nods, no doubt laughing to himself outside the lab as you gape at him. Perhaps you misunderstood him, but the look of eager anticipation and smugness on Jake’s face tells you otherwise.

You look at the window to the right of you, paranoid that any of the three people you live with happen to be approaching the lab. The fear of someone like your brother or your boss seeing you with your tits out for the enjoyment of a massive flirt like Jake Sully blurs into thrill, and just to see him grin like he did last night, you laugh to yourself and fist the bottom of your shirt, rolling it up and over your breasts until they fall out on display.

You look at Jake expectantly. He peers closer, his fangs displayed as he smiles so wide you think his face might split into two, and after a long, drawn-out moment of ogling them, Jake finds your eyes and nods appreciatively, raising one thumb for good measure.

Your shirt is back down over your breasts by the time Jake is standing upright and stalking towards the edge of the cliffs, a speed in his step. Waiting until he’s completely out of view, you watch him disappear past the drop and spin back to stare at nothing in particular, until a ripple of laughter bubbles out of you uncontrollably, your face unbelievably hot.

The possibility of the shower running cold all of a sudden sounds kind of appealing.

True to his word, Jake makes it back to the labs just after you’ve eaten, and is subject to Grace’s maternal fussing as she thrusts a food pouch into his lap and watches him until the contents have been devoured. Jake would need all of his energy for tomorrow — the first crucial steps were to be well-fed and well-rested.

“What’ll happen once you’re one of the People?” you ask Jake, comfortably nestled on one of the deck chairs that Grace found in storage that has been set up in the corner of the lab designated for eating and talking.

From spending a few months with Grace, everybody has become neutralised to her obsessive habit of separating her needs in her living space — somewhere to eat and talk, somewhere to work; somewhere to link up, somewhere to bathe, somewhere to sleep.

Jake shrugs with a smile. “I guess that’ll be it. I’ll have my ikran, they’ll throw me a little party, I’ll have suitors dancing at my feet…”

You smirk, eyebrows raised playfully. “Mighty bachelor.”

“But that’s not important, is it, Jake?” Grace interrupts pointedly.

“No,” he replies in genuine agreement. “The first course of action will, of course, be making Grace the boss. There’ll be a school in the village by next week.”

“Har, har,” replies Grace sarcastically. She takes a swig of her beer and smiles. “I just meant that relations are important. If we can do anything to establish friendly alliances with the People, it saves a whole lot of bloodshed and pain.”

“I hear you,” Jake assures her. “I am excited for my party, though.”

“Gotta pass first,” Norm says, balancing a pencil on his upper lip. “Easier said than done.”

“Hey, I just thought of my first plan of action. How about you do everything I’ve just done Norm? I’d love to see you try,” Jake says.

Now that he’s already bedded you and is fairly certain of the longing twist in his stomach being there as a physical reminder of his feelings for you, Jake’s not really interested in letting Norm treat him like a loser anymore.

Norm just throws a middle finger in Jake’s direction. Before Norm’s usual dark and depressing energy pollutes the good vibes in the room, you quickly jump back into the conversation.

“I wanna go to your party,” you say.

“Grace can come,” Jake replies sympathetically, his lips vanishing into a downturned frown. “If you have time and find a link unit in the Gate, then you’re welcome, Neytiri said so.”

“What about me? While you two are out getting drunk, I’ll be here, what, on my own?”

“Sorry, Spelly,” Jake frowns. “Hey, how about we paint you blue and try and sneak you in? Might pass as a Na’vi child if you’re lucky.”

“Charming…”

You tune out of Grace’s promises to make it to Jake’s party — if one even happens in the first place — and focus your attention on Jake.

You’ve only been in close proximity with Jake’s avatar for less than two days, but already, you’re making out the shape of his Na’vi features in his real ones. When he laughs, his head tilts up in the same way it did last night; his tongue poking at the inside of his cheek as he tries to reign the laughter in, the crease near his eyes as he purses his lips, the angle of his head when he finds your eyes locked on him once he does a scan of the people in the lab.

All it took was one night with his avatar to completely amplify the feelings you have for him. And all it took was one night in his avatar to breathe his own feelings into reality.

By the time Jake has made his way to the bathroom after pulling the short straw and being the last one in there, you’re already cocooned in bed, staring up at the fuzzy darkness intensified by Trudy’s top bunk.

With Trudy cleaning her pistols and Grace and Norm making sure all of their notes are in order for the early flight out to Hell’s Gate tomorrow, you focus your attention on the sounds of Jake in the small bathroom — the sounds of him brushing his teeth and cursing when he knocks something off a shelf, the little squeak of his wheels as he does his best to move around.

Your heart is hammering twice its usual pace when the light vanishes and his wheels grow louder as they amble towards the bunks.

Cracking open one eye, you just about make him out in the faint light cast by your overhead lamp. He rolls into view, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, although his features even out and he relaxes once he confirms that your eyes are, in fact, still open.

“Got me worried for a sec,” he says quietly. Everyone is still up, and he can’t risk giving them yet another reason to cockblock him.

“Just in time. I was dozing off,” you reply, nose wrinkling as you laugh at the roll of his eyes.

Jake adjusts himself, leaning down on his elbows as they mould into the thin mattress and cushion by your side. You shuffle, shifting your head to look at him as his eyes flicker across your face.

He supports his face with his hand pressed into his cheek, the other hand lifting to ghost across your face, lightly trailing over your hairline. There is a slight vacancy in his eyes, like his mind is full of thoughts that are taking his attention elsewhere, and for a moment, you wonder what to even say until his eyes snap back down to yours and his hand on his cheek moves.

His finger and thumb shift to squish your cheeks together, bringing your mouth into a pucker as he leans his head down and plants a kiss on your lips.

Jake breaks away after a moment, barely creating a distance between you before he kisses you again, and again. His hand releases your cheeks and with the other, he gently strokes the top of your head, all so softly it’s as though making any sudden movements might cause you to jump away.

There’s a faint taste of toothpaste on your mouth when Jake pulls away, your eyes still closed for a second longer than his as he maps your expression, not even trying to hide his pleased smile when they do open to the sight of his face still hanging over yours.

Jake steals another quick kiss on your chin, heaving himself back up with a forced and slightly dramatic groan.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” he tells you quietly, his voice suddenly hoarse as though kissing you has winded him. His chest is falling a bit more unevenly than before — has kissing you left Jake with the same fluttery feeling as it has with you?

You nod, your teeth tugging on your bottom lip to prevent the blinding smile from shining through. You’ve gotta leave him with a little bit of yearning — he can’t have it too easy.

“Really hope you don’t die in the morning,” you reply.

He laughs unexpectedly. “You know what? Me too.”

The lab is silent.

After so many weeks of being surrounded by the noise of other people, it is jarring to be alone. The metal lab groans in the wind, the frosty glass rattling as it gusts past the container you now call home. Outside, the front of the cliffside the shack is perched upon is glowing vibrantly, pulsing with energy, but unlike a few days ago, you have no desire to head outside, all too content in the toasty warmth you’ve curated in the lab.

You try not to feel too alone — in the link chamber, Jake is in deep like a tick, probably partying with the clan. With no distress calls from Grace and no disturbances from Jake’s most likely agonising session in the unit, you assume that all went well with Jake’s iknimaya. He must be buzzing, light and dizzy with whatever native alcohol he’s been rewarded with.

Meanwhile, here you are, waiting for one of your watercolour paintings to dry. A quiet night in the lab constitutes a well-earned night off, although you could consider your relaxing drawings of yesterday’s sample research if you really needed to.

With your knee up by your chest, you swirl the lab chair in a lazy circle whilst you wait, listening to the silence grow tinny as it stretches on. It occurs to you that you actually don’t enjoy being alone the way you used to. You’ve grown so accustomed to noise that without it, the world feels hopelessly lonely. You find with shock and horror that you even miss Norm complaining about everything, followed by some fancy Grace quip or Trudy laugh.

You don’t know how much longer Jake may be in there for. A couple more minutes? Hours? The longer you stare in the direction of the link chamber, the more anxious you feel.

So, maybe being all alone in the Hallelujah Mountains wasn’t what you dreamed it was going to be, except for the opportunity it gave you to colour a few pictures of stems and flower buds.

Sighing, you dab your little finger into one of the dry petal paintings and swirl the paintbrush in the water again, deciding to start on colouring in some of the bioluminescence outside into a spare square of space. In no way, shape or form are you an artist, but the painting calms you, and welcomingly takes your mind off the fact that you’ve been alone in this lab pretty much since you woke up this morning.

The paintbrush flicks over where you’re trying to imagine a tawtsngal from memory to spruce up the otherwise dull-looking painting of the view in front of you, and you’re just about to dip the paintbrush into the water to dilute the colour when you hear a rumble outside the shack.

Never a good sign.

You still, listening: the shack rattles twice, the table shaking, and for a moment you consider the possibility of there being a landslide nearby. With wide eyes, you jump up off your chair and rush to the window, peering out into the vibrant dark to check for any fallen rocks, but you see nothing besides grass and plants, and an even darker outline of jagged wings landing where Trudy normally lands her ship.

The ikran manifests into shape, a map of twinkling white freckles settling down in the short grass and screeching out in the night. You try to manage your breathing as you take in its sheer size; it raises up and screeches again, digging the speared claws under its spread of wing into the soft dirt beneath it and it bows down.

For a moment, it does not register to you that someone is climbing down off their back until you see their starry shape jogging towards the window — your eyes are still glued to the proud ikran showing off in the night, settling down in one of the low yet fluffed out trees near the fyìpmaut tree Grace has become infatuated with.

When your eyes finally snap over to the approaching Na’vi, you let out an embarrassingly loud sigh of relief when you realise it’s Jake, followed by a strangled noise of shock when you realise, yet again, that it’s Jake. Avatar Jake. Big, blue and beautiful Jake, who is currently punching in a string of numbers into the door and letting himself inside the lab.

Your hands are trembling like crazy when the air pressurises around him, and you almost don’t even know what to do when the inside door unlocks and swings open, and in he comes. Jake glances around the lab in a crouch, looking somewhat uncomfortable as if he forgot just how large he was, and he grins when he finds you.

“Hey, my hì’i syulang,” he calls, his hands reaching in a fumble under the emergency exo-packs to fetch one of the AAS-RO2s secured in a rack underneath. They were rarely used unless Grace or Norm needed to for some reason bring their avatars inside for something and were too lazy to wake up and do it in their human bodies, and for some reason, seeing Jake fiddle with one and actually get it to work despite having never touched one before feels absurd to you.

You hum with interest once he’s successfully geared up, smiling when he looks at you for approval.

“Hey, yourself. You got good with Na’vi.”

“Practise makes perfect,” he shrugs, though looks too cocky for his own good now that you’ve complimented him on it.

“I’m not tiny, by the way. You’re just huge.”

“Yep,” Jake grins, stepping towards you with two equally huge strides. His eyes catch sight of the drawings on top of the table and he drops to a comfortable crouch by your side, his brows high as he asks, “Aw, you colouring?”

You scoff quietly. “It’s research. Botanical, legitimate research.”

His hands skim through the pages with interest and he hums. “Looks fun.” When he looks up, it’s outside of the window, and you follow his gaze back to the resting ikran outside. “Wanna draw him? He’s real cute.”

“I see you survived your iknimaya in one piece, mighty warrior,” you reply, feeling the muscles of his arms with a teasing smile, and Jake looks at you from the side and his gaze softens. “How was your party, then?”

“Good,” he nods thoughtfully, gaze averting as he looks one more time at his ikran before dedicating his attention solely on you. After all, you are what he came here for in the first place, if not to show off to then just to see. His eyes find yours again and he brushes one of his hands up over your forehead again, thumbing your hairline, gaze so soft and warm it could melt butter.

“Grace came,” he continues, “the kids got her dancing by the fire. I tried some rank liquor, had to do my own ceremonial dance with about ten different people.” Jake’s smile widens affectionately, “Neytiri showed me the Tree of Voices. Utraya Mokri, the People’s direct link to Eywa.” You can’t help but smile with him as he tells you all of this. His happiness is infectious. “Eywa is…incredible. Grace needs to try it, she’d lose her mind.”

You laugh at that. “That could be your first course of action, Tsyeyk Suli.”

Jake’s entire face reshapes with adoration, so much so that he physically cannot stop himself as he pulls your head forward and presses a soft kiss to your forehead. The action takes you by surprise — you’ve barely begun processing the kiss Jake left you with last night, let alone accepted the possibility of another one being given by the body that lay you over a rock once.

He pulls away, and when he does, you notice the lurching gesture in his chest, as though he's struggling to breathe, and you pointedly bring up the respirator around his neck and laugh.

“Damn. I took all your breath away. Chug some dioxide.”

Jake rolls his eyes but takes a sip of the CO2, eventually falling back into place. Now reminded of the tedious ritual he’s made himself a slave to by coming in here in his new favourite form, Jake quickly thinks back to whatever it was he was talking about and continues.

“Neytiri also told me that I have now earned my place in the village,” Jake begins again, his voice a little bit dreamy. More than anything, you wish you could have been there to be a part of the vision playing in Jake’s mind, to visualise his stories of the village and the forest and his place in all of it.

“I may live in the village, so to speak, I can carve my own bow from the wood of Hometree.” When his eyes search your face hesitantly, he adds very slowly, “and I may also take a woman.”

“Oh,” you say, quickly scanning his own expression for anything out of the ordinary. When his eyes round in shape and his ears flatten against his head, the corners of his mouth twitching, you raise your eyebrows and ask, “and how do you feel about that?”

“Well, I told Neytiri that I had already chosen someone,” Jake tells you.

“Did you?”

He nods with a hum, trying not to look so amused, though failing horribly at it. “And so Neytiri told me that I should go and seek out my woman to tell her that I have made my decision. She was a little eager to get rid of me, actually.”

“And…that’s why you’re here?” you ask, almost regretting it when Jake opts for staring at you for a second too long, in a silence too concerning. Then, he smirks, brows high, eyes narrowed, like you asking is the silliest thing in the entire world.

“Obviously, Spellman.” Jake laughs as you do, bemused, “Jesus. For such an intelligent woman, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

“Takes stupid to know stupid,” you reply.

“Exactly,” he croons, face so close to you that he’s able to push his face forward to kiss your lips without much effort at all.

It’s not as though you forgot what being around Jake’s avatar felt like; it’s only been a few days since you last encountered him, and yet it feels like the first, your stomach rolling over itself like a tsunami as Jake’s lips find your own in perfect harmony.

Admittedly, you had expected your next tumble with Jake to be in his human body, but now that he’s here, now that he’s already flown himself out here to find you, you can’t think of any reasons to turn him away.

Last time, any possibility of kissing Jake had been next to impossible thanks to the exo-pack, but now, with nothing in the way, Jake relishes in the feeling of your lips against his own, his large hand cradling the side of your face.

Of course, he’s kissed you before, yesterday at a strangle angle to accommodate his unfortunate wheelchair. Now, there’s nothing to hinder his progress, nothing to prevent his plans — it’s just you and him, alone in the lab, exactly how he wanted it to be.

It’s as though the gravity in the room is being sucked out when Jake pulls away; you feel like you’re floating merrily off the chair, leaning forward as though to find him in the space he’s created, and Jake laughs from his throat and sweeps his gaze down your body.

No longer are you wearing your favoured shorts or tank top. To his delight, you’re in a long t-shirt that hangs around your knees, presumably only panties underneath, and his mouth twitches with intrigue.

“Cute outfit,” Jake says appreciatively, using his finger to lift up the bottom of the shirt and peering at your thighs, seeking out the bite he left you with the night before. When he finds the very faint outline, he laughs boyishly and glances back at you, “even cuter tattoo, honey.”

You laugh, and then Jake runs his finger across the nearly gone indent and hitches your shirt higher up over his wrist, the sight of your baby blue panties peeking into view as his grin widens.

“Why are you grinning so hard?”

Jake shrugs; now both of his hands are at your hips, shirt pulled up at the front, his golden gaze trained on your crotch.

“Just happy,” he says simply. Though he appears perfectly content zoning out on the sloping curve of your crotch, Jake looks up and says, “Did you know I was coming?”

“Well, I expected the real Jake to be here by now,” you confess, thinking about Jake lying in the link unit controlling his avatar with his hands on your hips.

Jake’s brows furrow, his smile flattening to an amused line. “I’m real.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Forget about him.”

“I like him.”

“And that makes me really happy, believe me, but this is real for me. This right here, you and me,” Jake says, his voice a little lighter than it was before, which is the only real way you can tell that he’s not joking.

This is serious for Jake. It’s not just part of a ploy to piss off Norm. Jake has become undone with his feelings, in a way that is so unbecoming of him that it’s actually embarrassing; now that he’s practically on his knees in front of you telling you it’s real, telling you that he’s pretty much told Neytiri and by extension the whole village that you’re his and he is yours, you know without a shadow of doubt in your heart that he is being sincere.

“Believe me, honey. It brings me no greater joy than knowing that you’ve been interested in me since we first met—”

“Well. If we’re being technical, then it was just before you got chased by the than—”

Jake simply frowns. “Hey. I’m not fucking around here, Spellman. I’m trying to tell you how I feel.”

“…Sorry. Go on.”

“…If I knew in my heart that I could give you what I want you to have from my wheelchair, I so would, but everything is easier like this. I can move. I can do whatever you want. I can be whatever you want. And you took all of me so well. Didn’t even struggle. You’re a perfect woman.”

“I love that you think that, but, you know, you're already everything I want from that wheelchair, Jake,” you tell him, and his ears pin back in surprise and his entire expression falls; he doesn’t look upset, however. Rather, he looks in awe. “You don’t have to walk or fuck me on a rock to give me everything you think I want. I just want you. Everything else is a huge, incredibly pleasant bonus.”

You reach out for his face and rest your hand over his cheek, feeling his skin on your own. He feels warm to the touch.

“You know how I feel,” you continue quietly, “and I like every second with you. I just wanted you to know for sure that even though you met my needs in your avatar, you never needed to.” Jake has barely moved an inch since you started talking, but when you add, “Even though I really like you like this,” Jake’s face twitches, like he’s trying his best to hold himself together. “A lot, actually.”

The splitting smile that stretches on Jake’s face fills your chest with a giddy type of glee.

Then, Jake leans forward, his forehead tilted against yours. Being so close to his face is unreal — you don’t know what to look at first: the lines of tanhì over his skin, the smooth look of it, the slight pink of his snout, the tug on the inside of his lip...

“You’re mine, Spellman,” Jake murmurs.

“Yeah,” you agree in a whisper, matching his own look of delight and feeling a fluttering rush through your chest when Jake secures his hands in a cradle around your face, bringing your lips back together with a sudden fierceness that, this time, is not met with surprise.

Unlike before, unlike the short kiss that had felt stolen between you, you’re surprised by Jake’s eagerness. His mouth presses against yours with a gentle firmness, as though not to hurt you but at the same time, enough to convey just how badly he’s wanted this. His mouth is warm against yours, the glossy sheen of saliva over his bottom lip slippery and inviting as his kisses become more open-mouthed.

Jake kisses you for so long you wonder how he can even breathe — even for you, it feels breathless. When he pulls away, you pinpoint the slight spasm in his chest, the tight veins in his neck as he fights his impulses. With a small laugh, you push the mask around his neck up to his lips and force him to capture his breath, occupying your lips elsewhere in the meantime.

Trailing your mouth across his cheek and jaw, it’s as though Jake is gulping down as much CO2 as he can manage to keep stored inside of him to go a little longer. Eventually, his chest rises and falls evenly while you gently smooch the expanse of skin under his jaw, catching the soft scent of whatever powders and paints he may have been decorated with earlier in the night.

The mask falls back down past his collar and he shifts; Jake’s hand pulls at your face, his thumb on one cheek and fingers on the other as he guides your mouth back to his, wasting no time in getting back to whatever he was doing before his lungs so rudely interrupted him.

If he had to die losing breath while kissing you, then it would be a suitable way for him to go.

“Okay,” he breathes, pulling away for a brief second before planting a wet kiss back on the pucker of your lips. You can taste the honey from the alcohol he’s been drinking all night in your mouth. “Up and out.”

With that, Jake lifts you up by your waist and ungraciously tosses you over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Then, with his back hunched slightly, he moves with familiarity through the metal corridors of the lab, navigating his way to the bunks.

Even like this, you feel so high off the ground, and you squeal with surprise and fist at nothing behind his back. He’d never let you fall, not that the landing would damage you in any physical way except for your pride, but still, you stare at the moving metal beneath his feet in a blur, half excited and half full of nerves.

The floor plan opens up to the bunk chamber, the familiar worn woven rug that Grace had been given from the villagers and had put on the floor appearing in view. You know confidently that there will be as little room back here as there was in the workspace at the front; the bunks are bolted to the wall but barely big enough for human bodies, let alone avatars, but Jake already has a solution.

He sets you down, his hands already working to pull your shirt up and over the top of your head. Not that he has to work very hard at all — you’re already helping him undress you, pulling the shirt up over your head, marvelling at the wide-eyed look of excitement on Jake’s face.

“Missed these,” he says, carelessly tossing your shirt to the bunks off at the side. He wastes no time in moving closer to you, his mouth attaching itself to the curve of your breasts, his tail flicking happily at your noisy approval.

With Jake mouthing around your nipple, the taunting graze of his teeth making you shudder, you let your body float into an astral plane of goodness and close your eyes, your head lulling to the side.

His eyes flicker up, greedily memorising every lift and twitch on your face until he catches sight of your hands sliding down your sides from his arms, fingers inching towards your little blue panties. He grins, tongue flat against your nipple, and after pressing a sloppy kiss to the side of where he’s been sucking, Jake breaks away and harmlessly slaps his hands over yours, holding them in place as you hook your fingers under the panty fabric.

“It’s like you’re doing this to me on purpose,” he groans, lips pressing kisses all across and down your body as his mouth makes its way to the smooth skin of your tummy. Jake rubs his thumbs in circles on your lower stomach, eyes finding yours.

“Doing what?”

“Being so fucking sexy,” mutters Jake, his tongue licking like a lion against your naval. The feeling makes you squirm and laugh slightly, your hands flying up from the clasp of his hands to the sides of his head.

There had been the expectation that perhaps human Jake would roll himself towards you once he got back, excited and turned on by your uncharacteristic lack of clothing. Instead, it had been avatar Jake who found you first, but it’s not as though your efforts have exactly gone to waste. If anything, they are met with the highest amount of appreciation.

Jake tugs the top of your panties with his teeth, moving them off your skin and down until he can see the sloping curve of your pubis, until he can smell the lust between your folds. Stopping him from stripping you bare is the last thing you want, but still, you look down at him playfully.

“Do you really need to take all my clothes off, Sully?” you ask, feeling his teeth graze on your skin as he unwillingly releases your panties from his mouth.

“Yes,” he replies, like it was obvious. Why would he want you to stand there in your panties all night when there were more fun things to do?

“Well, what about you?” Your hands slowly trail down from his face to his broad shoulders, fingers ghosting across the darker lines etched into his skin. Jake shudders slightly, his ears pricked tall, and they twitch in amusement when you point out the same thing he did when he bent you down over the rock.

“One of us is halfway there, and it’s not you.”

Between his legs, same as always, hangs his tewng, perfectly and teasingly in place of the large growth hiding beneath, and your eyes glance at them pointedly. Your gaze lingers there until Jake takes the hint, his smile turning lop-sided as he sniggers and reluctantly pulls away from you.

“As you wish,” he croons, his hands swiftly shifting to the flimsy little string that he so courageously entrusts to hold his tewng together. Full of anticipation, you roll back on the heels of your feet as the knot undoes behind his back, and the strings cascade down as the fabric loosens and pools to the floor in a puddle.

Jake's cheeks are aching with how much he’s smiling. Any cool composure he wanted to pretend he had is betrayed by the smile that has taken up permanent residence on his face, the enthusiastic swish of his tail beating against his back and the floor behind him.

With your eyes still trained on the stiff arousal between Jake’s legs, you bite your bottom lip in an effort to restrain yourself and smooth your hands over the weaved sheath fastened over his chest.

“Miss me?” Jake asks, eyes pinned to yours as you peel back the sheath and gently set his blade and armour to the side. Now, the only things on Jake’s body are your hands and the bands around his arms, tightly outlining both his muscles and pudges of blue skin.

“Shut up,” you mutter.

“I know you did,” he continues anyway, pressing a swift kiss to your stomach and hooking his fingers back through your panties. He appreciates the blue more than he’d care to admit — you probably didn’t do it on purpose, picking blue when it's the very colour of his existence, but it’s a nice touch despite that. “Can smell you.”

Jake twists the fabric around his finger like a ringlet and drags the panties down your legs, and once they’re bunched down by your ankles, he takes a deep inhale and secures his gaze between your legs, his chest rising and falling.

His hands instantly shift to your thighs, holding them as he gently, yet forcefully, widens your feet apart. Your pussy parts with the movement, the wet smell filling Jake’s nose like a drug. Behind him, his tail thumps against one of the stack of black storage boxes, and he groans with pleasure.

“Fucking perfect,” he says, a thumb moving to swipe up the partition of your pussy. The familiar feeling of it swiping makes you tense up, hands tightening around Jake’s shoulders. “My perfect girl.”

With another kiss planted against your naval, Jake pulls you closer to him, mumbling under his breath and against your skin a string of words you can barely hear.

He saves himself the unflattering carpet burn from shimmying across Grace’s rug and picks himself up, one hand on the floor and his other arm and hand keeping you flush against him while he adjusts himself on the ground.

Once he’s lying flat on the floor on his back, he grins up at you and guides you over him, gaze flashing to the approaching pussy he wants nothing more than to shove his face into.

“Come’ere,” he says quietly, tapping a finger against his chin while trying to bring you closer with his other hand. It would be very easy for Jake to just pull you forward — you’re not a weak human being, but you still have nothing on his Na’vi strength, and you know this.

You slowly step towards him, your feet on either side of his body, a warm flush engulfing you as you stare down in amazement at the eagerness of Jake’s expression, the giddy movements of his body. He can barely stay still.

“You…want me to sit on your face?”

“Clearly.”

Though you’re already straddling him, hands trembling, you ask, “What if you suffocate and die?”

At that, Jake laughs, sliding his hands up the length of your legs and pushing down slightly, until your knees buckle and you’re all but hovering over his lips, feeling the chuckles of laughter brush against your bare skin.

“It’s the only way I’d wanna go,” he tells you. “A true warrior’s death.”

You scoff, anxiously positioning above him. “How would I explain that to Grace?”

“With pride, hopefully,” and then he helps bring you down until you're comfortably positioned over his mouth, his tongue flat against you, your own mouth suddenly falling into a circular shape of pleasure.

“Oh!” you gasp. Although Jake has been between your legs before, it hadn’t felt like this. The refined, little, rough ridges of Jake’s tongue brush against you; his tongue feels like a cats in texture, prone and wet as you slowly grind across it, Jake’s hands back around your body though he barely even moves you.

Almost as soon as you take a seat on his tongue, Jake groans again, the satisfied sound grumbling from his throat and against your cunt. In all of his attempts to relive the memory of being between your legs, Jake forgot how good you tasted.

Around your waist, his hands tighten before adjusting themselves to help move you against his mouth, his tongue curling up once you’re coated in your own juice and his saliva.

There is a slight ringing in your ears that you’re thankful for, but the sound of Jake against your pussy is no doubt erotic, making Jake’s body twitch and his cock harden uncomfortably up against his stomach.

You’re cautious with putting all of your weight on Jake’s head, still lifting up instinctively off his mouth as he runs his tongue across your pussy, prodding the top against your hole and gorging himself on your taste.

The feeling of his mouth so firm against you is intense compared to the other night, where Jake had all but pinned you down with his arm and had his way. He seems to grow fed up with your caution and his hands tighten around you, bringing you down to rest your weight entirely on his face. He groans, arms and hands locked in place, his ears smushed by your knees.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, his baritone voice vibrating against you. You moan at that, your hands coming to fist at the pretty beads hanging down by his face. If the tug hurts, he doesn’t show it; Jake only moves you harder against his mouth, his eyes tightly closed in pleasure until they all of a sudden burst open, his golden irises boring up into your face as you stare back.

You watch his eyes flickering from side to side, memorising every pull and tug against your features as you grind yourself on his mouth. His tongue is hot against you, his hands curling around your thighs possessively to hold you in place.

Now that the feeling of him plush against your pussy is more familiar, you chase his tongue, moving against him until he’s prodding exactly where you need him the most.

Jake’s mouth shifts, his tongue flicking against your clit while his hand slides from your thigh to the gap between your legs. One of his fingers stirs up the slicky wetness residing between your folds before slowly pushing up, slipping past the clenching resistance of your hole. Without meaning to, you smack your hips down on Jake’s face, feeling his finger sink up to the knuckle inside of you as a low grunt sounds from his throat.

You’re somewhat relieved that Jake is in his avatar and can withstand the full weight of your body throttling him, but he almost seems to relish in the feeling, a second finger wiggling its way past your folds and up your snatch with the other. The thick widening of his fingers makes you gasp, toes curling, and one of your hands releases his hair and grips at the stack of boxes behind Jake’s head.

“Mmf—fuck, Jake,” you rasp, voice broken and high and whiney. A shaky exhale catches in your throat as his fingers fuck inside of you, and your hips seem to have a mind of their own as they rise and fall over his hand like his fingers were his cock — you’re bouncing slowly on them while he smirks to himself, tongue flicking over your swollen clit, mouth and chin smothered in saliva and juice.

“You likin’ that, honey?” he asks, planting a sloppy kiss on your thighs as he curls his fingers inside of you. “Feel good?”

“Uh huh,” you whine. At this point, you cannot bring yourself to look at him and all of his smugness. You feel his smile widen against your thigh as he nips at the skin, licking a stripe before turning his mouth back to your pussy.

“God… Jake, oh my—” You don’t finish that sentence, don’t even get the chance to.

It is embarrassing how close to an orgasm you feel. Jake’s barely begun, barely spent any time at all between your thighs and yet you can feel your body seizing, a small ball of warmth expanding inside of you. Jake’s eyes are still glued to you and the arched view of your body over his face, and you can practically feel his gaze burning into you, willing you to look back at him.

“You gonna cum up there, baby girl?” mumbles Jake, his voice muffled by your pussy. If it weren’t for the vibrations his voice sends up your pussy making you aware of his question, you might have missed it over the sound of your moaning and whimpering.

His fingers prod at the spongey insides of your pussy, one prod in particular making your hips buck furiously across his mouth.

Jake makes a noise of happy surprise, and like the smug asshole he is, he repeats the action, fucking his finger into the spot that makes you wriggle on top of him. The unravelling warmth inside of you is spreading; you can barely feel your toes, your thighs shaking around him.

“Jesus, Spelly,” he chuckles, his erection so hard and uncomfortable by his belly button that he grumbles to himself. That needs to be attended to immediately, if you weren’t so stubborn as to drag out the orgasm you so obviously want to have.

Jake moves his fingers faster inside of you, the other hand that’s around your thigh snaking to your hips to sink you down harder against him. You feel his knuckles at your entrance, his tongue pausing lazily at your clit.

“I—” you gasp, voice catching with surprise. Then, to his amazement, you frantically look down at him with a wide-eyed look of desperation. “Can I—?”

“Yep,” he grunts, greedily holding you firmly against his mouth as your hips rut like an animal. After a humiliatingly small amount of time, you feel your entire body tense with a blistering heat, and when you cum onto Jake’s tongue, it is the sweetest relief.

The burst of sweet white fluid that drips into Jake’s mouth is taken with desperation. Jake’s tongue coaxes it all out of you, his voiced approval rumbling into your pussy as he drinks it up. Meanwhile, your head is positively spinning, your vision white and starry and limbs numbed. You can barely catch your breath, and you have no idea how Jake is still alive down there, the mask around his neck virtually forgotten.

When Jake has finally milked all that he can from your cunt, he gently pushes you up and off his mouth, your whole lower body trembling like a rabid dog as he shifts you down onto his chest. Your cunt is fluttering with the absence of his tongue and fingers, the heartbeat between your legs pulsing intensely as you stare down at Jake’s face.

You’ve never seen a man more content with a mouthful of your cum before. A sheen of white coats his tongue as he laughs breathlessly, his pupils wide. Then, as though he’s only just remembered that he needs to breathe, Jake fumbles for his mask and pulls it up over his face, gulping down the CO2 whilst simultaneously trying to compose himself.

“My god,” he splutters, his chest rumbling beneath you as he laughs again. You feel sticky all over. “I love this pussy, Spellman.”

The compliment tears a laugh from your throat. “Gee, thanks.”

Laughter fills the space between you for a moment, but when you look at Jake he’s looking up at the ceiling, his mouth parted and his breaths heavy, the mask still in his hand by his chin. Now that he’s gone quiet in an effort to catch his breath, you come to the abrupt realisation that you’re in the lab, in the bunk chamber, sitting naked on Jake’s chest after cumming in his mouth.

It feels hilarious all of a sudden, though you don’t voice the amused vision in your mind. Jake seems content doing whatever he’s doing, a dazed look on his face, and for a moment, you sit there until your thighs clench and the sticky cum between your thighs begins to dry, and then you slowly heave yourself up off him.

Lifting his head up off the floor, Jake startles and looks at you in confusion. “What’re you doing?”

“Getting up,” you wince as you move, but Jake’s frown deepens. He lets the mask fall by the side of his neck, his hands speedily rushing to your waist to lock you in place.

“What? No, no, no, no, we’re not done yet,” Jake blurts, his brows high and eyes wide.

“More?” you ask, surprised.

“Obviously,” he splutters, bemused. “Don’t be so selfish, I’ve been missing you like crazy out there.”

You fall down the length of his body as Jake sits up, your pussy brushing past the hard tip of his cock. You gnaw at your lip bashfully — okay, maybe you had somehow forgotten about that.

His cock sits between your bodies, the thick and tense figure of it flat against your stomach as Jake leans his face towards yours with a disgraced look of unhappiness.

“You thought you were gonna cum and then just get off?”

“At least let me catch my breath,” you laugh helplessly.

“You’ll live,” he tuts. “Goddamn. Definitely Norm’s sister, you’re cold.”

Hearing the childish whine in his voice makes you laugh out loud, though his look of unhappiness softens when you smile at him, stroking the side of his face.

“Aw, come on, big guy, you don't mean that,” you try, pushing yourself up against the tight wedge between your bodies. He flinches slightly, the crease between his brows lifting with intrigue. Try all he wants, but he soon gives up on looking displeased and grins back at you.

“You don’t even have to do anything,” Jake suggests thoughtfully, his face tilted as he tries to entice you.

In all honesty, you have no protests against fucking Jake. In fact, the thought of his cock being buried in your stomach again is nothing short of a need for you. He’s not the only one who’s been thinking about it all this time — it’s not a competition, but you’ve been daydreaming about the cock between his legs a lot longer than he’s been thinking about you.

“All you’d need to do is sit on it, really.” You tune back into Jake’s voice. You don’t know how much you missed, but the message is abundantly clear.

You smooth your hands down his neck, fiddling with the beaded choker. “I don’t think it can fit in today.”

Jake barks out a laugh. “Please. It fit fine before, princess.”

“Yeah, before you destroyed my vagina permanently. I’ll be too tight!”

That only makes Jake look more pleading. “That’s a good thing!”

“Jake, I—”

“Fine, then just the tip,” he tries, surging forward and pressing a desperate kiss to your lips. You taste the tangy sweetness of your cunt that Jake loves so much on his lips; seeing him so desperate for you to sit on his cock would be funny if it weren’t so sexy.

You bite your lip in thought as he peppers a string of kisses across your face, as if trying to persuade you.

“You only have to take the tip, that’s all. You’re dripping, you’ll take it no problem, but you don’t even have to work or do anything. I’ll do everything.”

“You’re begging,” you state flatly.

“I know,” he drawls in a whine that makes you roll your eyes. “But you’re my woman and I need this pussy like a fucking flower needs water.”

“According to Norm’s research,” you start, reaching for the tip of his cock with a hidden smile, “rainwater and Pandora plants are—”

“Fuck,” Jake laughs into your mouth, his teeth bared in a grin as he kisses you between his words, “off. You’re so annoying.” Another kiss, though his heart soars when your body rises slightly off his thighs, “Always yappin'.” His tail thrums excitedly behind him as you position yourself over his cock, brows knitted together. “Always going on and on about something.”

“You want me to sit on it or not?” you ask bluntly, but your half hearted attempt at sternness is seen through immediately.

“Hell yeah, mama,” he quips, hands already busy on your hips as he tries to sink you down on his cock.

You stifle a laugh at his eagerness. Who would have guessed that Jake would be begging you to let him fuck you? Two days ago, it would have been hard to imagine.

“Shut up then,” you mutter, but he graciously says very little besides his own personal vocabulary of vulgar words when the tip of his cock pushes into you.

It goes in so easily that you know Jake is trying his absolute hardest to remain true to his word. Your pussy lets him in with virtually no refusal, swallowing the tip of his cock so flawlessly that he physically tenses, his hands tightening around you as he lifts you up and down on the tip, being ever so careful as to not accidentally sink you all the way down to the base.

Even just the tip of his dick elicits such a primal response from your throat, your eyes blown open. Jake’s barely given you breathing room since your last orgasm, and the overstimulating feeling of his cockhead loyally spearing inside of you is mind-blowing.

He grunts desperately against your mouth, eyes closed as he tries to reign in his deepest impulses. You press a kiss to his lips; you know how hard it is for him to hold himself back. It is as though your body is remembering who he is, how his cock felt deep inside of you, and when you next feel Jake’s hands lifting you up off the tip and sinking you back down, his eyes immediately blow open when he feels you clench around him like a fist.

“I—shit,” he blurts, momentarily letting go as you sink back down on his cock, the tip of it pushing deeper inside of you as more of his cock pistons inside. He looks apologetic for a moment, because he didn’t mean for you to take more than the tip when that was all he had promised, but after hearing the strangled and high-pitched moan that escapes your lips, he rides his hope for a moment and curls his arms around your body, moulding his mouth against yours.

“Goddamn,” Jake whispers, catching every gasp and breath you take and give. “That’s right, beautiful, you can do it.”

Whimpering, your trembling hands come to hold his waist while he lounges back, his back leaning trustingly against the stack of crates under the window, his hands remaining firm around your body. Jake watches in anticipation as you drag yourself up off his cock, leaving behind a shining trail of juice down the deep blue of his length.

While you’re up there, Jake takes a quick gulp of CO2 — the sound of him taking a deep breath as he contents himself with watching you makes your heartbeat quicken, although you’re much more focused on sliding your pussy across his tip, the roundness of it slipping up your slit while a litany of moans produce from your mouth.

And then, by happy surprise, Jake realises he doesn’t have to fight it anymore when you go to slowly sink back down on him and slip, half of his dick disappearing up your cunt with almost no resistance whatsoever, and the breathless gasp that fills his ears is nothing short of sinful.

“Fuck yeah,” he moans, sitting up restlessly with his lips on your mouth again, as his hands complete his desire of sinking his cock deeper up your pussy. You whimper into him, the dull ache in your stomach intensifying when you feel his dick spearing up into your cunt, his hips rutting underneath you.

He did his best, but he can’t hold back anymore. The sight of you swallowing up his cock is the very picture of perfection.

It was one thing seeing you with your legs spread on that rock. It’s another thing entirely to have you around his dick like a flesh-light.

“You said just the tip,” you whimper.

“You slipped, I didn’t make you take more of it.”

“I—” You groan as his hand grips around your waist like you’re just a doll. “God, you’re so big.”

“Yeah,” he sniggers, lips still against yours like he’s glued there. “But look how well you take me.”

Your attempts to make him feel bad are pathetically wasted; you’re drenched, your wetness like a lube to Jake as he pistons his hips upwards. The squelch between you is embarrassingly loud, although to Jake it is the most heavenly sound in the world.

He grunts into your mouth, softly whispering encouraging yes’ into every word you attempt to speak but fail at saying.

“A perfect fit,” Jake mumbles, his tongue flicking past your lips with a gasping grunt, “’s'like I was made for you.”

There’s nothing you can say to that, nothing coherent at least. In your best effort to please Jake, you suck in a deep breath and lift, only to bottom out and sink to the base of his cock. It feels like Jake’s buried near your lungs; he’s so deep, much deeper than he felt at the rock.

Jake shifts back against the boxes stacked behind him. Then, he gracefully lifts his hips, shoving more of himself up there until he can see the dent of his dick in your tummy. He groans appreciatively, eyes darting back to your face after marvelling at the size of him buried inside of you.

“You’re so good,” he mutters, his breath kind of shaky as he takes in the image of you, looking all spent on his cock. He picks up on the struggling shake of your legs and feels your cunt tighten around him. “Lemme fuck you nice, mama.”

The speed at which you go limp on his cock tells him you have no protests. Jake secures his wide hands around your waist and tightens, focusing all of his energy into his arms as he lifts you up his cock and slams you back down. Both of you moan at the same time, and the clear image of you fucked out and exhausted in his lap makes his dick twitch inside of you.

A heat simmers between your legs — Jake has reduced you to a hole to fuck and you can’t even be bothered to move anymore. You can trust that your body will make room for him, and you can trust that Jake will be careful as he has his way with you. With that in mind, you relax like putty in his hands, shapeless as he fucks into you.

For a while, Jake says nothing of significance. It is as though he is buffering or on a loop, entirely focused on jerking you on his dick, his pupils blown black and wide as he zones out on the sweat lining your chest, the soft rise and fall of your tits as you bounce on his crotch. You watch him the whole time, eyes half-lidded and glazed but unmoving; he is a man in Heaven, in his greatest element.

There is nowhere he would rather be than here, and there is nothing you’d rather be doing than giving your body up for the man you have become completely enamoured with.

One particular thrust inside of you makes you cry out unexpectedly, and his eyes flicker back up to find yours. His dick punches back up to where he last found himself, desperately searching for the spot that made you cry out, and when he finds it, a lazy smirk lifts on his lips.

“You’re a dream.”

Your mouth opens, and another blubbery cry falls out without you thinking: “Yes…m'yours, Jake..."

Not exactly what he said, but his chest swells with pride regardless.

“Damn straight,” he grunts, flicking his hips roughly. You choke a noise of surprise, feeling the coil of pleasure tighten in your belly right as Jake for some reason begins to move. He picks himself up off the rug and lifts you, spinning until he finds a surface he can set you down on. The first thing he finds is the little desk near the door, and he clears it with a sweep of his arm and wraps his arms around you tightly.

The cool metallic surface makes you shudder, although, with the way he spears himself back inside of you, the warmth quickly returns to consume your body. Jake bows his chest over you, fucking himself between your legs and watching with fascination at his cock disappearing past your folds. It looks the same as it did last time, to his delight, and he sucks in a hiss of breath, reaching for the mask again.

“Mmm, Jake, I really can’t anymore,” you rasp out, wrapping your legs desperately around his waist and clinging to the round shape of his biceps. He groans loudly once the mask falls back down from his face, his lips curling to a pout.

“You can’t cum yet,” he protests dumbly.

“Jake,” you say again, already feeling your orgasm threatening to spill. His eyes flash with worry, though you can’t imagine what he might have to be worried about. “I need to—”

“Please,” he says, pressing a kiss to your cheek quickly, his voice a mumble against your skin as he says, “just a bit longer.”

You whimper right into Jake’s ear, his hips staggering into you for a second. More than anything, you want to find your release, to give up and let go and take a breather, but the desperation to make Jake happy finds itself taking precedence.

In your heart, you know that Jake is currently on cloud nine, overjoyed just with fucking you like this — if you came right now, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. More than likely, he’d just carry on. Still, you tug at your bottom lip with your teeth and your whole cunt clenches tightly around him, which he takes as a silent order to keep going, and he receives the message loud and clear.

Now, he is a man on a mission — see how long you can go until you cum all over him.

Jake would happily spend all night between your legs, fucking the hole he’s stamped his name on, filling you up with so much cum you’d be finding it for days. Something chemical has happened to him since acting on his greatest desires; he dreads to think what he’d be doing, how he’d be feeling if he hadn’t been inspired by Norm’s hatred.

To think that he’d be at his party in the village, maybe being swarmed by curious Omatikaya women with fascinations for their newest clan member, potentially even trying to redirect the feelings he has elsewhere…

No. He schools the thoughts into silence. Why fret over the what-ifs when the present is the most perfect thing in the universe?

Jake drives his hips forward, shifting his lips from your cheek to your mouth and accepting the breathless kiss you eagerly give him. Your arms slacken; you keep one hand poised loyally on his bicep while the other reaches for the side of his face, fisting around one of the dishevelled braids to the side of his head. The burn of you tugging on them is barely even noticeable, or if it is, he doesn’t show it. Jake just presses his mouth against yours with a profound laziness, his hips slowing as he thrusts into you at a comfortable pace.

A part of you bursts open; as Jake pounds into your pussy in an uncharacteristically slow manner, he kisses you each time his cock burrows back inside. Your face is unbelievably hot as one of his thick arms curves around your back and appears by the side of your head, hand cradling your face. He has you pinned in place, yet with such little force that it would be easy for you to slither free if you wanted.

You want nothing less. Not when Jake is kissing you like it’s his favourite thing in the world to do. Not when your body is so numb and warm you can barely even feel your legs anymore. Not when the man you would do anything for is right where he belongs — up your snatch, on your mouth, smiling between each kiss.

His tail swirls from side to side slowly, content as he listens to the wet sound of your mouth against his own, the squelch of your drenched pussy filling his ears as they prick to hear himself sinking inside of you. Jesus fuck, you’re so wet — if it wasn’t making you so turned on at the thought of Jake being over the moon from the sound of it, then you’d be squirming in embarrassment.

Jake grins into your mouth, sniggering as the soaking sloppy sounds grow more pronounced. Knowing that he’s grinning because of that, and because he knows he’s the cause of it, your bottom lip curls into a pathetic whimper.

“Hear that?” It’s obvious that you can, he knows that.

How he wishes you could smell it the way that he can — the smell of the sticky mess between both of your legs is nothing short of incredible; it's so sweet that when he inhales he almost shudders. You wouldn’t even need heightened Na’vi senses to smell the sex in the air, to smell Jake on your skin, to smell you over Jake’s face and body.

A witty reply is on the tip of your tongue, but as Jake kisses you again, slobber around his mouth and yours, you can no longer fight the bubbling pleasure in your abdomen, the pressure that gets heavier the longer you hold out.

Jake takes a sharp intake of breath, as if he can smell the distinct change in your body, the orgasm lapping over itself like a tidal wave until it breaches the surface — but his thrusting does not cease, not even when your entire body shakes beneath him, legs falling limp around his waist. And not even when he feels a wet warmth burst up over his chest, a horrified yet pleasured squeal ripping from your mouth as he glances down and sees your gushing release, the billows of cum pushing past the tight fit of his cock, and a shiny layer of juice on his chest.

He blinks in surprise, his eyes wide, and when his nose fills with the smell of you, the smell of your squirt over his torso, he laughs unexpectedly and lifts his head with the widest grin you’ve seen.

"Shit,” he laughs in disbelief, kissing away the aghast gape on your face.

Even as he chuckles into you, you feel your face burning with embarrassment. It’s one thing to cum on Jake’s cock. It’s another thing to squirt on him. It’s an entirely different thing for Jake to find it hilariously sexy.

“I’m so sorry!” you blurt, hands immediately cupping Jake’s face. His nose furrows as his face twists, both in amusement and confusion.

“Why’re you saying sorry?” he asks, still trying to reign in his disbelieving laughs. It’s been a hot second since he made anyone squirt that hard, no less squirt down his chest.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” you explain breathlessly. You barely even register the fact that Jake’s still thrusting into you until the numbness of your body subsides and each thrust upwards is met with a cry of overstimulated pleasure. “I’ve never done that, I—”

“You’re incredible,” Jake grins affectionately. You’re incredible.

Jake thinks he could go on for hours. He could go on until daybreak, until he heard the whirs of Trudy’s Samson over the top of the lab; he would continue fucking you until Norm stepped inside, until he found you both back here. But when you stare at him exhaustedly and smile back, his heart lurches out of his chest and changes his mind for him.

You feel Jake’s dick twitch inside of you, the feeling making you jolt slightly as he thrusts in a few more times, as if milking every last inch of your pussy until he’s forced to withdraw, and then he staggers forward, moaning loudly with a tight and sharp hiss, and a familiar warmth spurts in your stomach.

Jake’s back is bent over, his chest bowed over yours as he shudders through his orgasm; the unmistakable warmth of his cum pools in your stomach, ropes of it filling you up until it slips down past your quivering hole to the table beneath your ass and back. He groans a few times, fumbling for the mask before pressing it to his mouth.

“Yeah,” you sigh. You could very well be floating up off the table for all you knew.

Peering down at the sight of his hard dick still snuggled in your cunt, you watch the thick trails of his cum squeezing out of you. You kiss his temple while his head is still hanging low and mutter, “Fill me up, big guy.”

Jake moans, lips sealed closed — actually, it sounds more like a sob. “Jesus.”

“Give it to me,” you continue, murmuring the words against his head. Hey, you’re feeling much bolder now that he’s exhausted himself and you don’t have to worry about having another orgasm denied and then ripped out of you.

Jake chuckles breathlessly, all of the breath back in his lungs now that he’s emptied himself inside of you. “Didn’t you say you were glad humans couldn’t get knocked up by Na’vi?”

“No? When?”

He scoffs, eyes lifting to yours as he levels you with a challenging look. “Oh, so you want that? Want me to breed you like a dog, Spellman? Fill you up, watch that tummy grow?”

The revelation of Jake’s unexpected breeding kink makes you laugh. Once, Jake had told the lab that he didn’t know if he wanted kids — didn’t think he’d be a good father, didn’t think he’d be able to cope with the pressure of it. Perhaps it’s his Na’vi instincts calling out in a tune, making him besotted with the idea, but either way, you grin at him playfully and press a kiss to his mouth.

“Nah,” you assure him. His smile neither fades nor grows, thank goodness. “I’m in no rush for any of that, Sully.”

He sniggers, then. “Me too,” and after a quick kiss he slowly heaves himself out of you, watching your jaw slacken as he slides out with a sickeningly loud pop. “It’s fucking sexy to say it, though.”

Suddenly, as if he forgot for a moment, Jake’s head cranes to your cunt and as his cum swells near your hole, he grins and watches it as it threatens to drool out. When it does, down your ass cheek and onto the surface of the table, his tail thrashes in joy and his fangs glint in the light.

“Yum,” he says, swiping his thumb across the little puddle of your cum and his and he sucks his lips around it, the little smack of his lips as he pulls it away making your thighs clamp together. “You taste good, honey.”

“It’s more you than me.”

Jake rises, his back still bent due to the low ceiling of the lab, but even now he’s looming over you, his hands reaching to help pull you up from your uncomfortable position to sit upright. You lift with a comically dramatic groan, and Jake rolls his eyes as you hunch forward, hands massaging your thighs sorely.

“I’m broken again,” you mumble, feeling the burn in your muscles as Jake takes himself to where his bunk is and fetches a towel from one of his storage boxes. By the time he gets back, the puddle of cum between your legs has doubled in size.

“You’ll manage,” Jake tells you affectionately, laying the towel flat in his best attempt to milk up the cum still pulsing out of you. He looks at the towel with a cringe — he can only hope the smell and colour will come out in the laundry.

After Jake’s done his best to clean you up, he takes himself to the laundry shoot and tosses the towel inside, making his way back to you quickly before you can stand up and stalk off somewhere.

“I brought you something, actually,” he tells you, suddenly thinking back to the gift he has strapped to his ikran’s leathers outside.

You hum vaguely. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Neytiri helped me think of it before I got here. Just something quick and silly, but you’re gonna—”

“Oh, yeah,” you interrupt, reminded of how Jake ended up here in the first place. “Are you sure it was a good idea telling Neytiri that you already had a woman?”

Jake pauses. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing like that. Just that… Well, won’t she say something to the other villagers?” you think aloud. It had been on your mind in passing when Jake first told you when he’d arrived, but now that it’s back in your head, you can see Jake processing the thought before dropping to his haunches in a valiant effort to see you evenly.

“She’s close with the village, that’s all,” you continue. “And with Grace, I imagine.”

He blinks dumbly. “Oh yeah.”

For a second, nothing is said. How could Jake have not thought of that?

Realistically, you know that Jake was just excited to tell someone that he had a woman in his life — you hadn’t been presumptuous enough to believe that Jake couldn’t find someone even if he hadn’t acted on his impulses a few nights ago, but even now that you know he meant you after all, you can’t help but think of all the ways it may come back to bite you in the ass.

“I mean,” Jake says slowly, tail flicking, “I was hoping we’d tell people eventually. I don’t wanna hide with you forever.”

“Wait, you want to tell people?”

He looks at you with a funny look of bemusement. “Obviously.”

“About us fucking?”

“What? Well, I mean, yes, in a sense, but more like that we’re together.”

“…Are we?”

“I thought you were the smart one.”

“I’m just… You wanna be with me?” you ask. You’re almost certain that you look and sound stupid, based on the way Jake is staring at you with a wild look of alarm, but, can he blame you? You were just about getting around Jake wanting to sleep with you — now, he’s basically asking you out.

Jake splutters out a nervous laugh. “Was that seriously not obvious?”

You don’t allow him to feel nervous as you reach for his arms in reassurance. The feeling of your hands around his wrists calms him almost immediately.

“If you want to be my man, Jake Sully, there are requirements to meet.” His brows curve curiously, though the sloping smile on his face reappears, to your relief. “I will also need to speak with human Jake Sully about this development. This relationship goes three ways, as you know.”

“Fair enough,” he says, doing his best not to laugh at how cute he thinks you are. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy for you to just forget all about him, though.”

“Never gonna happen,” you stress to him. “And I need quality time with you. If we fuck all the time, I’m scared my vagina will actually break beyond repair. You have two bodies to please me with, I’ve only got the one. You have to go easy on me.”

“Noted,” he nods. It’s sweet how seriously he’s taking all of this.

“And, last but not least…” You trail off and reach forward to kiss his lips again. Jake’s eyes flutter closed — his lips are still slightly tingly from kissing you stupid. You pull away all too quickly for his liking, and when he opens his eyes to look for you, his entire face softens affectionately. “We need to do something about Norm.”

Sighing dramatically, Jake weighs the very difficult options in his head.

Become his woman by spending more time with you? Easy. Consider it already done. But kill all the fun and tell Norm before he figures it out the hard way? Jake’s lips curl into a scowl at the thought of such a marvellous opportunity going wasted.

“How about…we do all of that and let Norm find out by himself?” Jake suggests. It’s an even trade — you’ll both get what you want, and you’ll both feel scores of satisfaction at the end of it.

When you don’t say anything for a moment, Jake is prepared to sign his defeat and give in, but then, when you grin at him and shrug, he hears the holy gates of Heaven open up in his favour and the angels sing.

Yep. You’re his. He’s yours.

Now he just can’t wait for everyone else to find out about it.

#jake sully #jake sully x reader #jake sully x human reader #avatar (2009)#avatar x reader #na'vi x human #avatar the way of water #avatar driver jake sully #human jake sully #norm spellman #jake sully smut #avatar smut #smut #ittojean #jeanbie #fantasize

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alyssumlovesthecosmere · 13 days ago

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So, the other day, Crash Course uploaded a video in their Religions series, about Judaism. Now, I haven't watched any video other than this one, but if this one is any metric to measure by.... well, it's bad. Really bad.

To start, the introduction starts with "shabbat toothbrushes", where John Green describes to us how (some) jews will brush their teeth on shabbat, while ensuring to not break any of the melachot, or prohibited actions. This, in my opinion, as an orthodox jew, is.... quite a framing to start with. Especially since immediately after that introduction, John Green let's us know that there are other jews! who don't do this! and just... sir, I'm an orthodox jew. Sure, I don't do follow that rule on the shabbat- sorry, the sabbath which you then explain is the shabbat to jews (the word Sabbath comes from the hebrew Shabbat), but I follow a lot of rules that folks find strange! And I do not appreciate a video talking about jews sidelining orthodox jews. Framing the video in that way is clearly an attempt to make Jews seem more "mainstream", but it erases, estranges, and (this happens more later on) villifies orthodox jews. Which isn't fair.

But we just started this 13 minute video. At this point last night, I sighed and figured this was going to be just your regular old "Orthodox Jews are strange and bad" sort of video, and resigned myself to that. And then I looked at the sections of the video. One of which included Zionism in it. And I immediately got more worried, because John and Hank donated through Project For Awesome to UNWRA which are.... very linked to Hamas, including there being evidence of UNWRA employees participating in the Oct. 7th Massacre. But okay. Maybe this video will be fine.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't. It was so incredibly bad. John Green admits at the start of the video that Judaism is complex, great! Now explain tha complexity correctly! no. So he starts off his history with... Ya'akov Avinu, sorry- Jacob. Who's a descendant of Avraham Avinu, sorry- Abraham (John uses the english names and not the hebrew one and it just bothers me). Which like... no, Jewish history starts with Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. In addition, a large majority of his sources are non jewish sources which is just. Why. There are so many jewish sources on Judaism!

As this is getting long, I'm gonna put a tl;dr here and then a read more cut. The tl;dr is this - the video is a horrendously western view of Judaism video, that seems to be written by non-jews who don't have any expertise in Judaism. It is filled with misrepresentation of jews, especially religious ones, is severely lacking pretty much all of jewish history, doesn't mention MENA/SWANA jews at all, and is quite frankly a disappointment. I'm mad and sad and upset and most of all disappointed with crash course for creating this video.

Still with me? great. I'm wordy and I have twelve minutes of this video to go through still. To make this a bit more organized, I'm gonna go according to the sections that John Green himself gave, and give a summary of what he said and what is wrong or misrepresented there.

The Many Versions of Judaism (aka, somehow not our history nor our story) there are a few things wrong/upsetting here. First off, as I said above, the fact that he uses the English names. Second off, the fact that he, bafflingly, starts the story with Ya'akov getting the name Yisrael, aka when Ya'akov fights with the angel. John then takes this to explain that Jews today still wrestle with Hashem in our own way, but in a... shall I say tumblr style reductionist way. Y'know, the "jews shake lemon at gd angrily behind a denny's" way. This chapter is the only one that will ever mention the ancient Israelites, and never the tie to the land of Israel itself. In addition to this, he describes Judaism as monotheistic, but that "half of religious jews today believe in some other spiritual force, and not the gd of the Hebrew Bible" which had me going what in the what. Just. No. like, sure, i'm a vaguely agnostic-atheist religious jew and uh, no? And I found his source, and well, if I had to guess - the jews who responded assumed that the god they were being asked about was the one in the xtian bible - and so answered no, while John assumed said jews meant the gd of the tanakh, aka hashem. Third, his "devil's advocate" scene is just. Once again, putting down Orthodox Jews, and compares without change Jewish Religious Institutions with Xtian ones. To quote "for a lot of jews, it's more about action than faith", I'd argue, personally, that that line is correct for most jews, as our religion is not really one of belief (orthodoxy) but of action (orthopraxy). And also, I'll paraphrase "many jewish people consider following Jewish law to be the most important thing" yes! yes we do! and not just many, most, that's! the whole! shtick! for us!! (and yes i'm aware this is a simplification). He also manages to vaguely describe Judaism as an ethnicity, and explain that some Jews are connected to the ancestral history (without explaining what that is, no connection to Israel here no sirree), which I guess is fine-ish? (it does not)

The Written Torah So here he starts off with saying that we'll focus on the torah and not the tanakh, as the torah is how we jews conceptualize our relationship to gd and each other. Except that... we also use the rest of the Tanakh for that! (minor kudos to him for saying that the tanakh was written by the ancient israelites. Just no mention of why there were ancient israelites and then we had to come back). The torah gives us most of our rules, but the tanakh expands on them, and teaches us how we choose to treat hashem, how we treat each other. When Jews say the written torah, we do oftentimes also mean the rest of the tanakh. Frankly, going through his sources, I can't figure out what source he used for this claim, except that he uses a lot of non-jewish sources (like the britannica), and very few Jewish ones which is just... why, you can clearly see these jewish sources exist, why not use them? I understand that this is meant to be lighthearted, but he compares the five books of the torah to seasons of friends, which is kinda eeeh. And added to that, his descriptor for bamidbar or numbers is "the ancient israelites wander and suffer through the wilderness" (paraphrased). First off, it was the desert, and second off this is exactly where in the torah we get all of the mitzvot and how to treat each other and hashem. This is it!! why name the book/"season" wrong?? He then continues and talks about how the themes of exile and return are common in the torah, and continue to resonate today, and yet doesn't... explain... the history of us being exiled. Instead, we take a tangent into antisemitism, specifically the plague related kind. Which... fine, I know he's got a liking for that aspect of history, but there's so much more. Of course, he also mentions that the Pope was one of the influential people who pushed back against it and... just... sigh. We're talking the catholic church here. The same catholic church WHO BLAMED JEWS FOR KILLING JESUS TILL THE NINETEEN SIXTIES. If the pope pushed back against it, it was because us jews had more value alive, not because he thought we had inherent value as people. Of course, since we're talking antisemitism, John only talks about xtian antisemitism. The "happy dhimmi" myth is alive and kicking in this video, as there is absolutely no mention of antisemitism within the non-western world. IN ADDITION, by framing the antisemitism the way he did - that the "dumb europeans" attacked the jews but their religious leaders were against it, John inadvertently erases antisemitism by non religious people, and by religious leaders. Both of which are and were alive and well.

Zionism (aka, I had to put this in here otherwise the tankies would yell at me, and I made a mess of it) And then we have this digression, which makes zero sense in the context of the story John is attempting to tell, into Zionism. There is no reason for it, and if it had to be in the video, it should have, quite frankly, gone in at the end. But that is only the start of the woes that I have to say on this section. To start, the amount of sources here are negligeble as compared to the other sections (note the numbers, all previous sources were for the other two sections)

48. Encyclopaedia Britannica | Zionism 49. University of Michigan | Zionism 50. Ben-Israel, Hedva. “Zionism and European Nationalisms: Comparative Aspects.” Israel Studies 8, no. 1 (2003): 91–104. 51. Ghanem, As’ad. “Israel’s Second-Class Citizens: Arabs in Israel and the Struggle for Equal Rights.” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 4 (2016): 37–42. 52. Halpern, Ben (2004) [1990]. "The Rise and Reception of Zionism in the Nineteenth Century". In Goldscheider, Calvin; Neusner, Jacob (eds.). Social Foundations of Judaism (2nd ed.). Eugene, Or: Wipf and Stock Publ. pp. 94–113. 53. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise| Zionism: Anti-Zionism Among Jews

[copied from the source sheet]

I haven't read the sources, so I'm not going to talk about them, but the fact that only half of the sources seem to have been written by jews is... not great. At all. And then there's how John introduces and talks about the topic. John compares the themes of exile and return in the Torah and Tanakh to the narrative told by Zionists, and mentions Zionism being a political movement. All of this is correct. However, what John is very obviously missing here is the history of Jews within the land of Israel. He talks about how we wanted a state for Jews run by Jews, but doesn't explain that we wanted it in the land where we came from, a land where we have mitzvot, commandments, that are specific to it. A land that our holidays and calendar center. The fact that this is missing is one of the glaring issues in the whole video. He also mentions that Zionism views Judaism as a nationality, which is true. Judaism is viewed as a nationality in the modern sense through Zionism, but it's also a nationality, or nation, in the older sense, regardless of Zionism. In addition to that, while Zionism is the idea of having a Jewish run state for Jews, it does not preclude the existence of other, nonjewish, people in this state. Which is important for the next bit. He then adds that, quote "this is complicated for lots of geopolitical reasons, but suffice it to say, Jewish people are not the only people with roots or a current presence in the modern state of Israel." Which, I guess does mention our roots in the land, but it also completely flattens the whole story into, what feels to me, "Jews Zionists bad for wanting a state because there are other people". He then mentions the Druze and Xtian and Muslim Palestinians, which is fair but also why specifically the Druze? And if the Druze, why not also the Bedouin? Both are minority groups within Israel, and if you want to talk about minority groups, the Bedouin are equally as important for this discussion! (another friend later pointed out that the likely reason is that the pbs source John uses mentions the Druze (but as muslims, and not as their own religious group which. sigh. Druze are not Muslim), but not the Bedouin. And of course, we get a "not all jews support the zionist movement, but many do" yeah. a huge womping majority. For a reason. At the end of this section he says you can find "much much more" on the topic in the sources and I just have to raise an eyebrow, because I do not count these 6 sources as "much much more" information.

Then, finally, we're off of this ill-placed and wrongly done section, and back to actual religion things. You know. Like how John had said we'd be talking about.

The Oral Torah and the Talmud We start off strong, with an accurate description as to what exactly is the Oral Torah, and what its place within Jewish society and Judaism is. And then... John tells us that there are "two guys who started it". Huh? Who? Hillel and Shammai of course! what. so, to explain to all of you who have somehow read till here and don't know, Hillel and Shammai are just one pair in a long lineage of those who were, according to tradition, in charge of the oral torah. Even more so, they weren't the first in their generation of pairs! (this is the time known as the Zugot, or pairs). Hillel and Shammai are the seventh generation in those who lived during the time of the mishna being slowly worked on and getting codified, and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was the one who did all of the codification, FIVE GENERATIONS AND A TEMPLE COLLAPSE AFTER THEM. So I chose to go into the sources to figure this one out, because frankly I'm baffled. And as far as I can tell, this comes from the encyclopedia britannica (again, why) saying that Hillel and Shammai were the last of the Zugot and that they taught the Tanaim (those who ended up writing the mishna), but just. What. Why. John then continues on to explain who Hillel and Shammai are, describing them as "Shammai, the rules are rules type" and "Hillel, the gentle, caring, impossible to anger type". I just- again with the putting down of one side (the stricter side) for the not so strict side. In addition to the fact that that isn't even an accurate description. It would be more accurate to describe the divide and debate between Hillel and Shammai as realistic and unrealistic. Hillel's school of thought, also known as Beit Hillel, worked with and around torah with the understanding that those who will be following it are people, and will make mistakes and need leniency. Shammai's school of thought, known as Beit Shammai, on the other hand, wanted people to strive to following the Torah in the most idealistic way. We follow Beit Hillel nowadays because they were better at taking day-to-day realities into account, but we remember Beit Shammai's halacha because we want to be able to fulfill our mitzvot in that way, and if human life didn't get in the way, we would do so. John Green stop putting those who keep stricter (or more idealistic) halacha as "bad" challange: level impossible. John Green then says, as is correct, that at around 200ce we started writing things down, but once again, he neglects to mention why we felt we needed to shift from oral to written (the answer is the Romans wanted us no longer jewish and we had lost our Temple and were going to be expelled from our holy land again, see, that's two sentences, is that so hard to say?) John Green then correctly explains that they way the Talmud was written down was by layers upon layers, "literally circling each other" however, that's only one portion of the halachic debate, and frankly, the Talmud is definitely not the central rabbinic text today. That's the Shulchan Aruch, which is based off of the Talmud, but collates all of Halachic debate into a masterpiece of a lot of books. It, too, has the layers upon layers thing, because why waste good paper space??? There are more mistakes here, in understanding that the Talmud is The Central Halachic thing, which again - look above I corrected it. I'll also happily admit that he's correct in saying that when we refer to the torah we mean both the written and oral ones. But we still have two sections to go, and I am still as wordy as ever.

Branches of Judaism Here is where I started to go from mildly annoyed at how he treats orthodox jews, to flat out mad. See, instead of explaining the differences between branches in a neutral way, John brings up differences that will make people feel things. He gives examples of questions - can women be rabbis - which will have listeners biased towards those communities that allow it (and yes, it is an issue within orthodox communities, but guess what! these communities are also trying to work within their framework of halacha for women's equality), or "can you push an elevator button on shabbat using electricity when the law says to refrain from creating fires and sparks on that day", which is an extreme oversimplification of the whole argument and discussion about electricity on shabbat, which will lead viewers to, once again, view those who do those things as backward, strange, and weird. And trust me, there are so many other halachic questions that can be used (such as can one heat food on shabbat, considering fire and heat, or how you deal with the dietary laws of kashrut), and idk. Maybe at this point I'm nitpicking, but as an orthodox not exactly a woman, it bothers me! It alienates me from the discussion, and it's really frustrating. He comments that the options you can choose are "unwavering, flexible, or somewhere in between", which to me shows a complete lack of understanding of what the orthodox framework of working with halacha is (too long; don't have time to explain - we can't strictly disagree with stuff but we can slowly push for change that may eventually end up disagreeing with something or another). He then explains Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism. His way of explaining is, while technically correct, missing an understanding of how we different streams of Judaism practice. John describes the differences as ones of strictness vs openness, lack of change vs flexibility. In reality, the difference between the streams is one of precedence. How much weight do we put on something that was written 2000 years ago? How much weight does our current way of living have? Orthodox Judaism will answer that what was written all that time ago has significantly more weight, that they knew more about halacha than we do, to Reform halacha, which takes halachic rulings from 2000 years ago under advisement, but sees how much the world has changed, and makes the rulings accordingly. I won't touch on his specific examples, and suffice it to say that they were in line with what I said earlier about his examples. They're there to make you feel something about these strange jews he's talking about, and that something is not always particularly nice, especially to Orthodox Jews. He then mentions a few other options, which is fine (though I wish he expanded on the "people who say 'I'm Jewish' but don't identify with any particular branch" as, with everything going on, and his sorely lacking explanation in how Judaism and conversion works, may lead to people deciding to just say they're jewish). After that he says that there "are jewish atheists". Yes. There are also orthodox jewish atheists, I thought we covered the fact that Judaism prefers action over belief at the start? I'm confused as to why he felt the need to add that here near the end of the video.

Next, he talks about the different physical branches of Judaism, and mentions that due to persecution we got to many different places. Of course, he once again neglects to mention the ur-persecution, or ur-reason that we are so spread out - our expulsion from Israel, and the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora (he mentions the Diaspora by name, but not the first reason for it). It's a glaring miss, but not as glaring as what is to come. He then talks about three diasporic communities, and I quote "...unique communities emerged in each new location: Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal, and Beta Israel in Eithiopia". One nitpick and one incredibly important correction. Ashkenazi Jews were originally from ashkenaz, ie France and Germany and eventually got to Eastern Europe as well - the name of the general European tradition is, however, Ashkenaz. The second, and more pressing issue, is that he says that Sephardic Jews are in Spain and Portugal. Those communities haven't been there in a Hot Minute, ie since the Spanish Inquistion. They've been in the SWANA or MENA region, with some exceptions for some Dutch, American, and British Jews. I had to look at his sources, because are you kidding me. Both (all three, if we include Beta Israel) sources are from britannica. Again. My first instinct was that maybe the issue was with the source! I was wrong.

The source for Ashkenazi Judaism (emphasis mine)

Ashkenazi, member of the Jews who lived in the Rhineland valley and in neighbouring France before their migration eastward to Slavic lands (e.g., Poland, Lithuania, Russia) after the Crusades (11th–13th century) and their descendants. After the 17th-century persecutions in eastern Europe, large numbers of these Jews resettled in western Europe, where they assimilated, as they had done in eastern Europe, with other Jewish communities. In time, all Jews who had adopted the “German rite” synagogue ritual were referred to as Ashkenazim to distinguish them from Sephardic (Spanish rite) Jews. Ashkenazim differ from Sephardim in their pronunciation of Hebrew, in cultural traditions, in synagogue cantillation (chanting), in their widespread use of Yiddish (until the 20th century), and especially in synagogue liturgy. Today Ashkenazim constitute more than 80 percent of all the Jews in the world, vastly outnumbering Sephardic Jews. In the early 21st century, Ashkenazic Jews numbered about 11 million. In Israel the numbers of Ashkenazim and Sephardim are roughly equal, and the chief rabbinate has both an Ashkenazic and a Sephardic chief rabbi on equal footing. All Reform and Conservative Jewish congregations belong to the Ashkenazic tradition

As you can see, britannica does in fact mention that Ashkenazi Jews were first in the Rhineland valley (germany) and france, and later moved to Eastern Europe. I have some nitpicking on that as what I said doesn't match but regardless. Ashkenazi Jews aren't in Ashkenaz according to John, they are in Eastern Europe

The source for Sephardi Judaism (emphasis mine)

Sephardi, member or descendant of the Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal from at least the later centuries of the Roman Empire until their persecution and mass expulsion from those countries in the last decades of the 15th century. The Sephardim initially fled to North Africa and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, and many of these eventually settled in such countries as France, Holland, England, Italy, and the Balkans. Salonika (Thessaloníki) in Macedonia and the city of Amsterdam became major sites of Sephardic settlement. The transplanted Sephardim largely retained their native Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino), literature, and customs. They became noted for their cultural and intellectual achievements within the Mediterranean and northern European Jewish communities. In religious practice, the Sephardim differ from the Ashkenazim (German-rite Jews) in many ritual customs, but these reflect a difference in traditional expression rather than a difference in sect. Of the estimated 1.5 million Sephardic Jews worldwide in the early 21st century (far fewer than the Ashkenazim), the largest number were residing in the state of Israel. The chief rabbinate of Israel has both a Sephardic and an Ashkenazi chief rabbi. The designation Sephardim is frequently used to signify North African Jews and others who, though having no ancestral ties to Spain, have been influenced by Sephardic traditions, but the term Mizrahim is perhaps more properly applied.

As you can also see, the britannica also mentions that Sephardi talks about North African Jews. What is that? SWANA Jews exist? and experienced persecution? Couldn't be. Surely all Jews are actually European and are colonizers in the land of palestine (heavy sarcasm and cynicism). I've got to say, I find the fact that using where Jews ended up for Ashkenazi Jews, and where they "originated" (in quotation due to the fact that only the name originated from there) for Sephardi Jews rather disingenuous, as the story being told erases the existence of SWANA jews to an upsetting and worrying degree.

Review and Credits Almost done. Just have to get through the review. John finishes up the story with something that I have mixed feelings about. He describes Judaism as a religion, but that being Jewish doesn't require a religious identity. I find the but annoying. It's not "judaism is a religion but doesn't have to be", it's "judaism is a religion and a people, and a culture, etc etc". Judaism is older than the concept of religion, we're a people, who can also have a set of belief and behaviour, but not doing them does not preclude you from being part of the family (unless, of course, you actively leave the family but that is a nuance not for here). The rest of his review is fine in my opinion. And now, the credits, which have a list of names that don't seem to be Jewish, but I can't find that about all of them (i know at least one of the people in charge of information for either this video or the series in general is definitely not Jewish)

I don’t know how to finish this, other than… Do better, Crash Course, do better @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog.

#jumblr #judaism #crash course #john green

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