#we know (collectively believe) that this happened right?

[vigilskeep]

wait, Minerva "canonically" has a baby?? i want to know everything!! when how what - how does motherhood change her, pls elaborate, srry if you talked about this before, i just love them so much

she does!! i talk abt this less bc i think its self-indulgent jghsskks and that people are less interested in this, but it’s super fun to think about for me

the baby was a surprise, minerva was kind of being stupid about it lmao because she was being less careful than she might have been in the circle, especially because she’s a warden now so she’s less likely to get pregnant at all, without really thinking through what might happen. (i’m sure our local kinloch hold spirit healer companions both had their field days telling her off for this at some point.) but as soon as it does happen she wants the baby so badly. as a circle mage and then a warden she had never really seriously considered it a possibility for herself, but she loves children, and it’s been so long since she had a real family

it’s zevran’s and zevran is in antiva most of the time. i think she has a weird crisis about whether he’ll want anything to do with a baby, and she would despise for him to come back just out of obligation but also what if he doesn’t come back, and she ends up procrastinating telling him for, like, months. just a stupid amount of time. bc she was born to stress her man out and to give her wardens unnecessary grudges against him because they thought he had obviously chosen not to be here because obviously she would have told him. truly when will his suffering end. anyway he’s thrilled when somebody eventually does him the courtesy of letting him know

the baby’s a boy, she names him duncan, it sparks a whole other argument with alistair that we won’t get into here. he gets nicknamed junior a lot, partly bc he’s duncan jr, partly bc of the ongoing joke that he’s the resident Junior Warden. he was very much raised in warden blue since the cradle. because minerva is so busy and zevran is often away, he’s pretty much collectively raised in vigil’s keep by the awakening squad and whoever else gets added to that trusted inner circle. which works out bc wardens don’t often have kids of their own so they all just kind of... share this one lmao. (and possibly sometimes also oghren and felsi’s kid if they stick around?) it’s velanna who instigates this bc that’s what the dalish do and she’s also literally the only one here who knows what to do with a baby so thank the maker she’s here (minerva’s practised with kids but by nature they don’t have babies in the circle)

i’m so thrilled that spellblade is a crow-themed rogue-like mage subclass bc that’s exactly what i always pictured for duncan jr eventually. he’s a mage, his magic manifests very young, but minerva is very strict abt his studies and it has the unfortunate reverse effect of making getting his dad or nathaniel or sigrun to teach him combat much more fun. it works out really bc his magic having manifested is a tightly kept secret so it’s good for him not to have to rely on it

being a mother kind of changes/crystallises a lot of minerva’s priorities. it’s one thing to say, like, i would like to improve the situation for my fellow mages at some point, or, it sure would be nice to live past a warden’s usual limits. it’s another thing entirely to have a mage child and need to make a world that’s safe for him and live long enough to see it done. it ends up being a key issue of her conflict with the chantry between origins and inquisition because nobody’s quite certain what the rules are. obviously if she were still a circle mage any child of hers would be taken away. but she’s not a circle mage and arguably the chantry has no right to a child born outside of the circle, with no sign yet (as far as anyone outside vigil’s keep knows) of magic. (like i say it manifested younger than normal so this is believable even to those who think he will eventually show.) it definitely exacerbates tensions, shall we say, because obviously they can pry him out of her cold dead hands

he’s probably still only quite young in inquisition. six or seven? somewhere around there, i hate timelines. not sure where he is while minerva and her squad are on their quest, but given the very short list of people she trusts that much, i have to say that the most insane answer is likely: he’s in denerim as a temporary ward of the king. probably the first elven kid to be such

[serickswrites]

Hey :)

Can you write a fic where whumpee is new to the team and has a dark mysterioys past - so when their framed as a traitor the team believes them.There beaten up by some members of team despite protests of not being the traitor and given to whumper o put in custody who posses as a good person and planned it all to have them.

The team eventually uncovers the truth that whumper is bad and is actually the traitir-however whumper already tortured whumpee-sexually assaulting them,branding their name into their arm.When they break into whumper's place-whimper is already dead courtesy if whumpee who managed to free thrmselvez and kill them-however they collapse upon seeing their team.

The team us guilt ridden and doesn't know how to make amends and team leader feels like a failure

It's ok if your not interested in doing it♡

Anon, Anon, Anon! When I tell you that I have had an idea like this on my back burner for a while, I cannot tell you how long it has sat there. I have scrapped this story twice. But, because you are voicing exactly what I wanted to write several times, I'm going to do this. This is a series and will be posted under the title "Monster"

Please enjoy!

Warnings: betrayal, physical violence, unconsciousness, captivity, restraints

"Leave your weapon on the table," Team Leader said coldly as they watched Smallest Teammate.

Smallest Teammate was confusion. What had happened? Team Leader never talked to them like this. "What, I don't understand? What--"

"Put your weapon on the table," Team Leader ordered.

"We know who you really are," Teammate One hissed.

Smallest Teammate's mouth went dry. "I can explain, let me--"

"You sold us out!" Teammate Two stepped forward angrily. "You sold us out after we accepted you!"

Before Smallest Teammate could open their mouth, Teammate Two swung, their fist connecting with Smallest Teammate's cheek. Smallest Teammate didn't try to fight back. They hunched over themself as Teammate Two and Teammate Three surged forward.

"You sold us out!"

"How could you!"

"Whumper revealed exactly who you are!"

Teammate One's words froze Smallest Teammate's heart. Whumper. Whumper had infiltrated the team. Whumper had found them. "I'm not....Whumper....they..." Smallest Teammate couldn't get a good word in as the team was unrelenting in their beating.

"I don't want to hear another lie from you," Team Leader said, their voice very close. Smallest Teammate could see them through the flailing limbs of their team. "You lied to all of us. You lied to me. And you sold us, all of us, out."

"Pl-Pl-Please," Smallest Teammate tried. Their body hurt. Everything hurt. The team was relentless in their beating. If they fought back, they would prove Whumper right. And so they had to hope that the team wouldn't kill them.

"Whumper has graciously offered to take you off our hands and turn you into the proper authorities," Team Leader sneered as they stared down at Smallest Teammate. "They will be here soon to collect you."

And though Smallest Teammate wanted to respond, wanted to beg for mercy. They couldn't. The darkness that had edged their vision for so long as becoming all consuming. They could only hope that Team Leader would realize their mistake sooner rather than later. And that Whumper wouldn't kill them yet.

Tags: @acer-whumpstuff

[be-an-echo]

- and I wanna kiss you, make you feel alright I'm just so tired to share my nights i wanna cry and i wanna love but all my tears have been used up -

[lwcina]

the fact that the us government can continue funding and arming a genocide despite massive public opposition really highlights how inherently non-democratic the united states is

[themyscirah]

Okay so basically the United States MINT of all people is going to be working with DC to make a line of coins! These coins sadly won't be in circulation (the things I would do to live in a world where I could get Batman coins from the supermarket) as they're collectors coins, but will be releasing over the course of the next 3 years, 2025-2027.

Designs haven't been released yet (the same is true for all 2025 designs) but we know there will be 9 coins in total (3 each year) with the first year featuring (of course!!!) Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Although we know the first three heroes to be featured, the remaining six have yet to be decided, and it turns out the Mint is putting out a survey on their site to gauge which of a group of culturally significant heroes people want to see most! (link to the form is mentioned in the article above)

The considered group includes: Supergirl, the Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, John Stewart GL, Aquaman, Hawkman, Jamie Reyes BB, Robin (Damian?), Cyborg, and Batgirl, of which 6 will be selected.

As someone who does a bit of coin collecting myself (mainly circulation coins like the quarters sets, but I also have a couple proof and collectors coins) I think this is a really cool and interesting idea that showcases the history of the comics medium and these characters and their influence on American culture. Really excited to wait and see what the designs look like for the coins already announced!

[exoexid]

i won't let anyone tell me ever again that my history degree is useless. i won't allow anyone to say that humanistic and social sciences don't count under capitalism, and aren't able to help us all """progress""", or bring significant changes to our reality. we are seeing the roots of the "no one of us can be free until everybody is free" quote (thank you maya angelou!!), and how it all comes down to learning and studying and listening to our past and the people all around the world affected by a (western established) multifaceted system that is failing now more than ever because thanks to social media and the global connection it's giving to all of us it cannot look away anymore. a system (and its enablers) that slowly but surely are being exposed and forced to take responsibility in such a impactful and inescapable domino effect.

you start by reading about i/p and then you find yourself reading and informing yourself about yemen. about the ethnocide of the uyghurs. about armenia. about sudan and tigray and the congo. about why namibia is responding to germany. about south africa, and about the numerous human rights violations north american first nations have been suffering for centuries (about the residential schools, about how many reserves don't have clean drinking water...). about thousands of refugee camps and dangerous migrations and why people risk their lives to cross the mediterranean.

it all comes down to caring, even if just a little bit, about things that happened not too long ago actually. in history terms some of them practically happened yesterday. it's beautiful to see so many people fighting for justice and for a better future, but that can only be achieved if we know our past. one of our uni professors used to tell us that we don't study history because of that saying about how a society that doesn't know its past is condemned to repeat it, but because the day might come in which someone might try to deny a fact or event that definitely happened and definitely affected some group of people, and we have to be able to identify it and correct it. we have to be able to identify if oppressive tactics of any kind are being established and pushed again, even if they aren't exactly as they used to be (because they never are) to stop them. we are here thanks to our ancestors, and we owe it to them. we cannot, we mustn't forget.

[joycrispy]

I wanna talk about The Angel Who Would Be Crowley.

Because I had a certain set of expectations, which got thoroughly trashed in the first five minutes of S2, and my genuine response is, "Oh, fuck, yup. You're right. That's WAY better."

Looking around at GO fandom, I'm not alone in this. So let's talk about it.

Basically, a lot of people (myself included) believed that he was a high-ranking angel, and therefore as chilly and remote as every other powerful angel we'd seen at that point. We pictured Crowley-To-Be as long-haired, regal and imposing --and the fanart at the time reflected this. I'd link some if Tumblr didn't hate links.

Something like this:

We were collectively drawing on a few things --mostly, Crawly's appearance and general bearing in the Biblical scenes of S1--

--But also scattered hints of his importance, backed up by conspicuous absences in Heaven and a few profound displays of power. That's all better covered elsewhere, so I won't reiterate the arguments here. All I'm saying is: I think our headcanons were justified.

But it turns out he was this:

!!!

With his curly little--!!

And his neat white--!!

IT TURNS OUT, he was an angel who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty. Furfur, who knew him before the Fall, says:

"You used to jump on me back, little monkey in a waistcoat..."

(The use of a diminutive there, 'little'...oh, that fascinates me.)

In a pretty huge subversion of expectations, we're given these glimpses of an angel who was sweet, and joyful, and heart-meltingly silly.

In sum...an innocent.

(Perhaps innocent to a troubling degree.

We see how he troubles Aziraphale, during their first conversation. He starts looking around and behind them, checking to make sure that no one can HEAR the blithe and reckless things coming out of this angel's mouth. This angel who talks like he's never been reprimanded in his life; like it's never occurred to him that anyone would want to hurt him.

Before the Beginning, Aziraphale understood Heaven better than he did. The danger is plainly occurring to Aziraphale.)

So now, we the viewers are in on a cruel joke that Aziraphale has known all along, which is that this --THIS-- is the angel who--

*checks notes*

--did a million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulphur. For asking questions.

...Imagine you are Aziraphale, and everything inside you wants to believe Heaven are the Good Guys, and God is Good and Everything She does is capital-R Right...and now try to reconcile that. Keep trying. I don't think he ever totally managed it in 6000 years.

All this gets further complicated when we learn that, despite all of the above, we were still right. That sweet excitable babby up there?

He WAS a powerful and high-ranking angel.

That much is explicitly confirmed, with significant evidence that he could have been among the mightiest of archangels...

...Who apparently accosted his fellow angels for piggyback rides. And was remembered millennia later by those (now fallen) angels as something 'little.'

What does that tell us about who he was? Is?

Hell, Aziraphale has known to be wary of the archangels (and the judgements of Heaven in general) since before the Fall even happened. He chooses to believe they are Good; he can't fool himself into thinking they are Safe.

Yet he's absolutely certain that Crowley won't hurt Job's children. Enough to stand in a burning building and say to them, "I can't save you, but don't be afraid. I won't need to."

And what reason does he give?

("I know you."

"You do not know me."

"I know the angel you were.")

What does that tell us about who he was? Is?

("The angel you knew is not me."

But how is Aziraphale supposed to believe that, when he can see him all the time?)

tl;dr --yes, this is better. I love the tragedy of it.

'Innocence died screaming' and all that.

[ell-vellan]

Solas: Our people used to be here. Sera: Pfft, you say that everywhere. Solas: It is more true than you want to believe. Sera: I bet, right? Who wants to think about stepping on dead elves? Solas: Din elvhen emma him? Sera: Oh, you felt that one.

SO. This dialogue.

Setting aside that this is a running theme with Solas/Sera banter - that he trying to persuade/push her into becoming something more, either more Elvish or more of a leader, which may or may not just be Solas messing with her in return for her putting lizards in his bedroll - I was curious about the Elvish that he speaks here.

In the wiki, it says "din elvhen emma him?" is "meaning unknown." Which is curious because don't we know the meaning of these words separately, already?

(Stop me if this has been done before; I'm no expert.)

din = dead/death, not/isn't, "someone who is not". Falon = friend, Falon'din = friend of the dead, makes sense.

Elvhen = "Our People," the collective term for the elven race

emma = my, mine, i am, or within/full of.

him = become.

Taken altogether literally, "dead our people mine become." Elvish isn't a literal language, it's very figurative, with multiple possible meanings based on context.

Solas mutters this under his breath with disgust after Sera's disregard of his people's deaths. (For me, this dialogue happened in the Emerald Graves, though I don't know if it's location-specific; either way, he obviously finds this very disrespectful.)

I propose this phrase is Solas saying to himself something along the lines of, "My people died to become this?"

Which is. Yeah.

[stephobrien]

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that.

Note: If you prefer plain text, you can read the plain text version here.

Over the last few days, I’ve had conversations with several Jewish people who told me how hurt and scared they are right now.

To my great regret, some of that pain came from a poorly-thought-out post of mine, which – while not ill-intentioned – WAS hurtful.

And a lot of it came from cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of people who claim to be advocating for Palestine, but are using the very real plight of innocent Palestinians to harm equally innocent Jewish people.

Y’all, we need to do better. (Yes, “we” definitely includes me; this is in no small part a “learn from my fail” post, and also a “making amends” post. Some of these are mistakes I’ve made in the past.)

So if you’re an advocate for Palestine who wants to make sure that your defense of one group of vulnerable people doesn’t harm another, here are some important things to do or keep in mind:

Ask yourself if you’re applying a standard to one group that you aren’t applying to another.

Would you want all white Americans or Canadians to be expelled from America or Canada?

Do you want all Jewish people to be expelled from Israel, as opposed to finding a way to live alongside Palestinian Arabs in peace?

If the answer to those two questions is different, ask yourself WHY.

Do you want to be held responsible for the actions of your nation’s army or government? No? Then don’t hold innocent Jewish people, or Israelis in general (whether Jewish or otherwise), responsible for the actions of the Israeli army and government.

On that subject, be wary of condemning all Israeli people for the actions of the IDF. Large-scale tactical decisions are made by the top brass. Service is compulsory, and very few can reasonably get out of service.

Blaming all Israelis for the military’s actions is like blaming all Vietnam vets for the horrors in Vietnam. They’re not calling the shots. They aren’t Nazis running concentration camps. They are carrying out military operations that SHOULD be criticized.

And do not compare them or ANY JEWISH PERSON to Nazis in general. It is Jewish cultural trauma and not outsiders’ to use against them.

Don’t infuse legitimate criticism with antisemitism.

By all means, spread the word about the crimes committed by the Israeli army and government, and the complicity of their allies. Criticize the people responsible for committing and enabling atrocities.

But if you imply that they’re committing those crimes because they’re Jewish, or because Jewish people have special privileges, then you’re straying into antisemitic territory.

Criticize the crime, not the group. If you believe that collective punishment is wrong, don’t do it yourself.

And do your best to use words that apply directly to the situation, rather than the historical terms for situations with similar features. For example, use “segregation,” “oppression,” or “subjugation,” not “Holocaust” or “Jim Crow.” These other historical events are not the cultural property of Jews OR Palestinians, but also have their own nuances and struggles and historical contexts.

Also, blaming other world events on Jewish people or making Jewish people associated with them (for instance, some people falsely blame Jewish people for the African slave trade) is a key feature of how antisemitism functions.

Please, by all means, be specific and detailed in your critiques. But keep them focused on the current political actors – not other peoples’ or nations’ political or cultural histories and traumas.

Be prepared to accept criticism.

You probably already know that society is infused with a wide array of bigotries, and that people growing up in that environment tend to absorb those beliefs without even realizing it. Antisemitism is no exception.

What that means is, there’s a very real chance that you will screw up, and get called out on it, as I so recently did.

If that happens, please be willing to learn and adapt. If you can educate yourself about the suffering and needs of Palestinians, you can do the same for Jewish people.

Understand that the people you hurt aren’t obligated to baby you. Give them room to be angry.

After I made a post that inadvertently hurt people, some were nice about it, and others weren’t. Some outright insulted my morals and intelligence.

And I had to accept that I’d earned that from them.

I’d hurt them, and they weren’t obligated to be more careful with my feelings than I had been with theirs.

They weren’t obligated to forgive me, trust me, or stop being mad at me right away.

I’ll admit, there were moments when I got defensive. I shouldn’t have. And I encourage you to try not to, if you screw up and hurt people.

I know that’s hard, but it’s important. Getting defensive only tells people you care more about doubling down on your mistake than you do about healing the hurt it caused.

Instead, acknowledge that they have a right to be angry, apologize for the way you hurt them, and try to make amends, while understanding that they don’t owe you trust or forgiveness.

Be aware that some antisemites are using legitimate complaints to “Trojan horse” antisemitism into leftist spaces.

This is a really easy stumbling block to trip over, because most people probably don’t look at every post a creator makes before sharing the one they’re looking at right now.

I recently shared a video that called out some of the Likud and IDF’s atrocities and hypocrisy, and that also noted that many Jewish people are wonderful members of their communities.

I was later informed that, while that video in particular seemed reasonable, the creator behind it is frequently antisemitic.

I deleted the post, and blocked the creator. I encourage you to do the same if it’s brought to your attention that you’ve been ‘Trojan horse’d.

EDIT: Important note about antisemitism in leftist spaces:

While it's true that some blatant antisemites are using seemingly reasonable posts to get their foot in the door of leftist spaces, it's also true that a lot of antisemitism already exists inside those spaces.

This antisemitism is often dressed up in progressive-sounding language, but nonetheless singles Jewish people and places out in ways that aren't applied equally to other groups, or that label Jewish people in ways that portray them as acceptable targets.

If you want to see some specific examples, so you can have a better idea of what to keep an eye out for, I suggest reading this excellent reblog of this post.

Fact-check your doubts about antisemitism.

Depending on which parts of the internet you look at, you’ve probably seen people accused of antisemitism because they complained about the Likud and/or IDF’s actions. So you might be primed to be wary, or feel unsure of how to tell what counts as real antisemitism.

But that doesn’t mean antisemitism isn’t a very real, widespread, and harmful problem. And it doesn’t mean many or even most Jewish people are lying to you or being overly sensitive.

So if someone says something is antisemitic, and you aren’t sure, I encourage you to:

A. Look up the action or thing in question, including its history. Is there an antisemitic history or connotation you aren’t aware of? For best results, include “antisemitic” in your search query, in quotes.

B. Understand that some things, while not inherently antisemitic, have been used by antisemites often enough that Jewish people are understandably wary of them. Schrodinger’s antisemitism, if you will.

C. Ask Jewish people WHO HAVE OFFERED TO HELP EDUCATE YOU. Emphasis on WHO HAVE OFFERED. Random Jewish people aren’t obligated to give you their time and emotional energy, or to educate you – especially on subjects that are scary or painful for them.

@edenfenixblogs has kindly offered her inbox to those who are genuinely trying to learn and do better, and I’ve found her to be very kind, patient, reasonable, and fair-minded.

Understand that this is URGENTLY NEEDED.

In one of my conversations with a Jewish person who’d called me out, they said this was the most productive conversation they’d had with a person with a Palestinian flag in their profile.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

I didn’t do anything special. All I did was listen, apologize for my mistakes, and learn.

Yes, it feels good to be acknowledged. But I feel like I’ve been praised for peeing IN the toilet, instead of beside it.

Apologizing, learning, and making amends after you hurt people shouldn’t be “the most reasonable thing I’ve heard from a person with a Palestinian flag pfp.”

It should be BASIC DECENCY.

And the fact that it’s apparently so uncommon should tell you how much unnecessary stress and fear Jewish people have been living with because of people who consider themselves defenders of human rights.

By all means, be angry at the Likud, the IDF, and the politicians, reporters, and specific media outlets who choose to enable and cover up for them.

But direct that anger toward the people who deserve it and are in a position to do something about it, not random people who simply happen to be Jewish, or who don’t want millions of people to be turned into refugees when less violent methods of achieving freedom and rights for Palestinians are available.

Stop peeing beside the toilet, people.

[street-smarts00]

Weirdest Place

Spencer Reid x gen neutral!reader

Summary: The team finds out you and Spencer have been dating during a night out.

WC: 1.1k

A/N: this is yet another fic based on an episode of friends, specifically a scene from the blackout episode but i added a fun twist lol

Tags: conversations about sex but not smut, established relationship between r & reid, consumption of alcohol

After the team was finished at the BAU they all went out to a local bar for drinks. As the night went on JJ and Hotch left to be at home with their kids. With their boss gone and the tipsiness from their drinks, the topic of conversation got more and more inappropriate.

“A boat?” Rossi asked

“Yes,” Derek confirmed

“A boat?” Emily spoke this time.

“Why don’t you believe me?” Derek asked, slightly offended.

Emily raised her hands in defense, “It’s not that we don’t believe you.”

“It just seemed like your weirdest place would be a bit more adventurous based on how you brought it up,” Rossi voiced.

Derek furrowed his eyebrows, “and a boat isn’t adventurous?”

“No it is,” Penelope chuckled before reaching for her drink. Of course, she’d already heard about Derek’s nautical escapades.

Derek directed his attention back to Emily, “And what about you? What’s your weirdest place?”

She leaned back in her seat with a tinge of embarrassment she tried to hide with smugness. “That’s classified,”

Rossi and Derek cringed at Emily’s diversion.

“Oh god,” Rossi chuckled before taking a sip of his drink.

“Do I even wanna know?” Derek asked half joking.

Emily shrugged instead of answering. Derek decided he was better off not pushing Emily to share her story. He then brought his attention to the man across from him.

“What about you, pretty boy?”

Spencer’s head darted to him with raised eyebrows. “Me?”

“You got a weirdest place?”

“I- um.”

His ears started to turn a shade of crimson and he stuttered on his words, or lack thereof since he was caught off guard.

“It’s probably like a library or something,” Rossi jokes, earning a bright laugh from Derek.

Penelope set her drink down, “don’t make him say it if he doesn’t- “

“Actually it was.”

Everyone froze and turned to Spencer.

Emily was the first to speak, “What?”

Spencer shifted in his seat while the courage he had before started to dwindle. His face was now officially turning red.

“Me and um- someone were at the library because I was showing her it’s Edgar Allen Poe collection. Then at some point we ended up in … um the second floor bathroom.”

“Oh my god,” Penelope giggled before placing her hand on her mouth in shock.

“I can’t believe I was right,” Rossi commented.

“I can’t believe Spencer Reid was getting freaky in a library,” Derek said with a humorous grin.

“Shut up,” Spencer squeaked in a high pitched voice.

He hoped the topic of conversation would quickly be dropped so he didn’t have to reveal too much about his love life. But he suspected that wouldn’t happen once you came back to the table.

You and Spencer had started dating a few months prior and wanted to keep things to yourselves. You both intended to figure out the beginning of your relationship without the eyes of your friends.

“The line for the bathroom was so long,” you complained as you approached the table and sat down next to Spencer. “What did I miss?”

“Oh we never heard Y/N’s place,” Penelope excitedly pointed out.

You looked at her confused, “What place?”

“I have no clue how we got here but they all started talking about the weirdest places they’ve had sex,” Emily explained.

“Wow. Well, when I’m done I need to hear all of yours,” you pointed your glass in a motion towards all of them before drinking the last sip.

“I usually don’t venture outside the bedroom but out of the few times I have I think there’s two tied for first place.”

“What’s one of them?”

“Library.”

Silence fell over the group. Spencer’s stomach dropped to the floor at your answer. His face turned cherry red and his eyes remained frozen on the table in front of him.

You on the other hand were baffled at the reaction from your friends.

“What?”

While your eyes scanned the group you were met with relatively neutral expressions that didn’t match the growing tension in the air. All of them looked as if they wanted to say something, but not one of them was ready to speak.

Embarrassment and regret were creeping their way towards you in silence. Your body tensed up and you folded your arms in front of you.

“Come on guys, it's not that weird. It’s not like we were in an aisle, we were in the bathroom,” you tried to defend yourself.

That sentence seemed to spark something in the group. Their body language started to relax but still had a bit of hesitation. They all knew at this point, but they wanted you to confirm it.

“What floor?”

You followed the voice to Emily “Excuse me?”

“What floor was the bathroom on?”

You couldn’t wrap your head around her question.

“Why does that matter?”

“It does, which floor?” Penelope questioned this time.

“Second I think,” you hesitated, still confused.

“Oh my god!” Penelope squealed. “You guys are sleeping together?”

With your eyes wide, face hot, and heart pounding, you stared at her. Trying to figure out how a story like this was one they already heard. You forgot until now that they were already playing this game before you got back.

Turning to the side you playfully smacked Spencer’s arm. “You told them that?”

He gaped at you and grabbed his arm. Face still red of course now accompanied with a crack in his voice. “I didn’t think you were gonna tell them. I thought you would have talked about the other time.”

“Why would I tell them that?” You said in a quieter tone.

“What other time?” Derek interrupted, filled with curiosity.

Rossi pipped in next, “you said two places were tied for weirdest, what’s the other place?”

You and Spencer went quiet. You looked at each other before returning your gaze to the group.

“I think this is a great time to get a refill,” you grabbed your glass and stood up. “Spencer, coming with?”

He quickly scrambled to stand up, “Absolutely.”

The two of you made your way to the bar as your friends all started murmuring.

“So, you didn’t want to tell them you had sex on a plane?” He asked with a slight smirk.

“No, of course not!” You squealed which earned a laugh from him.

“Eventually they would’ve found out we’re dating and I didn’t want them to figure out it was on the jet,” you explained.

“It’s not like any of them were there,” he said before leaning down to kiss your forehead.

“I still don’t wanna get fired.”

[luxuourr]

Why manifesting is your best friend + society is a bitch.

manifesting ?? my best friend ? hell no. i need to work so hard...

pookie it's not your work hard thing , your society you live in, we collectively live in , has told us fucked up shit we don't need to believe in, nothing of it is true. The only thing true is what's from the heart and it's the feeling , you didn't and god didn't and universe didn't send time upon us , we used our brains to create it ,

laws don't fail. laws are made laws because they're undeniable.

understand time is not linear , scientists found alphabets otherwise let's be honest , who would have known what's English is?? If Greeks and Egyptians didn't work on time. would we know today?

nuh uh! so I suggest you to remember, don't look at how much time or date you're at, don't look at how many hours until he (sp ) surprises ur enemy with date , how you fail

no time to think of this, think the best of every possible circumstance, I know and you should too, you're doing a great job

even if the last conversation with him ended in a divorce, breakup or failed situation ship, you can get it all back, even if life has not been kind to you and you could not keep up with the most important exam of your life AND you're a victim of domestic abuse or parental abuse. it's not too late, you're not doing anything right or wrong , just because you could not do more than you could because of circumstances, it'll not change your results , it'll not change you getting 100%, if you did everything positively and tried to slap your negative thoughts there's always hope. i say this as I have not prepared anything for the most important math exam of my life and it's 5 pm rn , I have 14 chapters and have the most biggest exam of my life tommorow at 1 pm, have severe depression and the most toxic and hurtful family you could ever imagine to have.

believe me, no one will care about you, until you make it happen.

do you know what your job is ?

- know what you want + assume you're that version, that super model , famous celeb, have that desired body s/o or whatever , fullfill yourself after that and BOOM you wake up in it, won't even take less than a 2-3 days if your belief is good enough, you're doing shit in a fun way to manifest everything you want

- failure doesn't exist , no you're not delusional for attempting nothing in exam and wanting 96% ,you're god remember. the others who have the exam aren't , if you assume you'll know everything without studying that's going to happen, it only depends on what you feed yourself with.

- gone is gone , it's like it'll never come back, if there is something attached , like up coming results from what happened, i suggest assume + accept and move on

- if you script, mediate, robotically affirm, visualize or do whatever, it is meant to happen

- do not worry, you're doing a good job, just try your best for certain things or assume , everything works in the best possible outcomes

- mountains and clouds , centuries and the equator will move for you to get your desires.

- no you're not cursed and shit, life's a rainbow sparkle colors it's all a roses of bed and not what society taught us, just assume and you'll wake up with it

- for example if you have important exams of your life , there's this girl in front of you doing so well in exams , u don't wanna cheat and there's no chances anyway but you realize, the best you're doing right now is trying your level best in the exam and if you have time or not , time doesn't matter it's just created by us, remember she's not better she has no idea about LOA It's , you it's me it's us. Why would she be better, she had to study 24/7 and then still assume about average grades and stress over what's wrong and right , instead you , who could visualize given it well, be the person who got 96% in these exams isn't it much more fun, less tiring and entertaining??

- you got to know manifesting for a reason, trust people who posted their success stories, trust yourself , be kind to yourself and don't let the old story walk over you, it was never there , failure never existed , you've always been the new story you created for yourself, understood.?

- beating yourself up is not going to reverse time again honey, it's gone , it's not coming back , like never so focus on yourself, your feelings , your intentions , your life. Try to know that manifesting is not about trying to get and doing methods to recieve , it's about KNOWING and feeling.

e. g Aliyah is a girl who's a manifestor she wants good grades, she has issues she cannot study because of and cause her to be burn out at home , so she decides , the night before finals.

she thinks " i will try my best and even if it's the point where it wasn't good enough, universe and manifesting has my back, the time that'll be taken by the institute to check my exams , I'll revise everything including all my wrong parts of exam and unfilled parts to fully filled correct answers because crying and whining won't do shit, but this feeling will change everything" , even her bsf in this case supported her and told her that she's manifesting for her and everything plays out in the best possible circumstances. You only assumed like that and made it happen

e. g there's another manifestor called Sara she is also giving the same exam as aliyah , but instead of working on her self concept , believing in herself

, she'd cry for hours everyday for three months so instead of reality giving her the 100% she's been hoping for , she fails she thinks 3D is everything( it's not ) , she doesn't believe in bloggers she's impulsive, thinks crying is the solution to everything , she spends 3 months crying and shitting about herself to achieve nothing in life

prior to this aliyah the master manifestor slays in everything she does, she accepts and moves on , every time bad thoughts get to her , she slaps them with " NO THIS IS MY WORLD IM AN ACCURATE PERFECT MANIFESTOR"

so who of them saved themselves despite abusive household and everything??? Sarah just spent all the time crying and whining.

you can either be her. ( Sarah) or HER (aliyah)

[sp0o0kylights]

We often see Robin focused on her own love life (or lack thereof) while Steve collects more You Suck tallies on the board, but imagine Steve does find a girl he dates that he hits it off with?

He aces dates 1 through 5 and suddenly he's around a little less, his new relationship looking serious, and Robin isn't jealous but--

She is worried.

That's her best friend. Her platonic soulmate!

She doesn't think Steve would ever stop being those things--Her dingus has a soft squishy heart under all that hair.

Problem is, Robin's seen this play out before.

Had band friends drift away because someone's dating someone else and suddenly they're all wrapped up in each other's lives, friends pushed to the wayside.

She doesn't say anything though. Knows how lonely Steve is. How much he wants (and deserves) a relationship.

Then the worst possible fucking thing happens: Steve's new girl telling him she isn't comfortable with Robin.

That she doesn't believe girls and guys can be "just friends" and would Steve please stop seeing Robin so much? Please?

Her friends even saw him taking Robin out to lunch yesterday and thought he was cheating!

Of course she knows Steve isn't cheating. He'll prove it to her, right? By letting Robin know they can only be coworkers? And their friendship?

Robin hears all this at her and Steve's next shared work shift, and she feels the floor of her world give out beneath her.

Fear and hurt crawling up her throat because of course Steve can't tell whatever her name is why Robin will never date him.

Of course this chick clearly isn't taking Steve's regular excuses as an answer, and--oh God, what if Robin is losing him, isn't she?

Then Steve's done talking, clearly expecting Robin to say something, and oops she may have been panicking and not listening there at the end but she manages a very choked up;

"I mean if you think shes like, the one..." because what is she supposed to say!?

And Steve, the only person Robin's met who craves a relationship as much as she does if not more, frowns at her with a bitchy little twist to his face and says: "What part of "so I told her that was ridiculous and we broke up" didn't you hear?"

Robin gasps a breath, the world stable once again. She doesn't know when she started crying but she does register Steve's panic when he clocks it, panicking and pulling her into a hug.

"Oh my God did you think I'd agree with her!?" He says and he sounds a little hurt about it, she'll have to fix that, but presently all Robin can do is cling to her best friend and sink deep into the knowledge that he really won't leave her.

Even for the things he wants in life the most.

[paperclipninja]

I'm gonna sound very old person yells at cloud but I don't care, I feel like I need to say this. We all (well most of us) know that messaging Neil with any headcanons/theories/wishes/hopes/dreams to do with the show is a no-go because it could potentially compromise the story he wants to tell or ends up telling. And yes, he is a grown up who chooses what to respond to etc and I think it's wonderful he engages with fans and answers a lot of lovely and interesting questions about his process, writing and journey etc.

However, there is another reason not to send theories and ideas about how the show should go to the show creator in the hope of a response: it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether a theory is correct, or a speculation may or may not play out. That is why fandom exists.

Online fandom is where we all come together to yell and cry and throw around weird-ass ideas and theories and look at art and read fanfic and unite in our love of characters and a show. A huge part of being in fandom, is the way fandom theories become like an understood little bit of fanon lore that some people attach to, others disregard. But it doesn't matter. And part of the fun of fandom, is when a new season or a new episode of the show comes out, you have this collective catalogue of ideas and theories and headcanons and you get to yell and scream, "omg it happened1" or "lol that that thing was ever talked about" or "thank god that theory didn't come to pass".

Wanting to know now (not that we ever will) and not wanting to wait until the next season to find out the answers diminishes the fandom experience. I cannot stress enough how much we are in the absolute peak of the fandom experience right now. The between seasons time is the ultimate time to be a part of a fandom (as I'm sure many people are well aware), knowing there's another season coming energises everyone to create and connect and speculate and it's glorious! I know it feels like it'll be like this forever, but it won't. Next season is the last and yes, there will be a flurry and uptick of all the energy and excitement once again, and I absolutely believe Good Omens fandom will live on and remain active and thrumming. But there won't be theories and what ifs and hunting for clues for the next season, and over time it will dwindle a little and plateau and some people will fall into other fandoms, and while it will probably bubble away, there won't be the anticipation that sits with us now.

My point is, fandom is where we get to throw around ideas and flail and be ridiculous and also serious sometimes, but it's all for us. For the fans. Showing Neil theories or getting in a flap about a particular speculation and asking if x, y, or z might happen isn't just about putting the creator in an awkward spot, it takes away what fandom is about. Just let this time be ours. If you haven't been in fandom before, enjoy it! Don't be in a hurry to seek definitive answers or know things either way.

It doesn't matter if any or none or all of the things that float around end up being correct or incorrect. Fandom isn't about being right. It's about being a part of a community and being able to share ideas and it's about it being FUN.

So TL;DR Stop sending Neil fan ideas because that is for fandom, not for the creator.

[queer-geordie-nerd]

This has been said ad nauseum, I know, but the thing I just *cannot* get over is how very quickly and easily the left as a movement abandoned its most basic principles:

“Rape is an abhorrent, violating crime and we must believe and uplift survivors” - until it is done to Jewish women and girls in the name of ‘resistance’ then it’s just fine and dandy, or we might not even believe you at all.

“An armed force invading and mass murdering civilians is a war crime” - until the victims are Jews and you’ve decided it’s ‘resistance’ and ‘you don’t get to criticise how they fight back.’ No, mate, the word you’re looking for is ‘pogrom.’

“Slavery is bad” - until it is Jews being held hostage in Palestinian homes and forced to work then it’s ‘they were treated well and fed, what more do you want?’

“Indigenous peoples regaining their ancestral homelands is a key part of decolonisation and is a worthy endeavour” - until it is Jews regaining the land of Israel after centuries of disenfranchisement then it’s ‘white supremacy’ and ‘colonialism’ and the most evil thing in the world.

“Collective punishment is bad, citizens aren’t responsible for the actions of their government” - until we can treat every single Israeli like evil incarnate and deserving of the worst abuse and treatment simply for existing.

“Oppressed people know their own oppression better than you do. Listen to them and don’t presume to know better about the issues they face” - until it’s Jews talking about antisemitism and then it’s ignoring them, talking over them and accusing them of weaponising their oppression to silence criticism.

“Abuse and violence against an oppressed group must be condemned wholeheartedly and we must stand with the persecuted” - until it is Jews facing a 400% increase in antisemitism - being spat at, beaten, raped, ostracised from public spaces, having their schools and synagogues targeted, and then it’s shut our eyes and ears and pretend none of it is happening.

“Queer rights for all” - until Israel dares to be a beacon of queer rights in the Middle East and then it’s ‘pinkwashing.’

Do you even hear yourselves? Do you even care that you are being breathtaking hypocrites? How do you expect anyone to ever take you seriously ever again?

[kaivenom]

How would Benedict Bridgerton court you... HCS

Masterlist

You both first crossed glances at a ball, you were not a debutant, just passing around, just like his sister Eloise, you weren't much interested on claiming attention, but you catched his.

His first thought when he saw you in the back of the salon, tapping your feet to the rythm of the song while looking at a big painting was that he needed to paint you.

He spent the rest of the night, admiring you from the distance, until you both almost bumped into each other.

Inmediatly he took the chance and asked you to dance.

It was the funniest night you both had, cause after the dance, you talked about art, and drinked, and danced again, all night until your mother decided it was time to leave.

After that night, you didn't heard from him in a couple of weeks, you almost thought he forgot about you.

The thing was that he was collecting information about you, everything he could find that he knew you would like.

Then a bouquet of your favourite flowers came to your door, signed by the name of "Your artist", you knew it was him, but he surely wants to be romantic so you let him be.

A couple of days later, your favourite crystals, and then gems, and fabrics, and art supplies.

With this routine of secretism, a couple of months passed by with his gifts demostrating that he knows you.

You saw each other a couple more times during balls and dances, until you decided to approach him again.

"Why do you sent me notes but not talk to me?"

"I want you to see that i can know you better than anyone, plus i want you to be as crazy in love for me as i am for you."

A smile escaped both of your lips, suddently you had an idea.

You dropped your fan carefully and he inmediatly get down to pick it up.

"So... that's how you like to play then." he told you with a smirk.

"You said you wanted me to get crazy about you, who says i can't play that game too?"

"Then we both must play."

The once innocent game of knowing each other turned into a rollercoaster of temptation.

Small touches while dancing, innapropiate comments while talking in public, purposely moving to the corner of the room to have more privacy with your not so discreet behaviour.

(I firmly believe that Benedict is a switch with a very brat behaviour, so picture that)

Until your mother decided that you were going to marry a noble.

Thats when the game stopped and started to get serious.

Benedict distanced himself from you and you got so sad from the lonelyness that awaited your future that you wouldn't leave your room.

Your mother didn't let you alone in any social act, that means that you can't talk to him... ike that could make a change.

One week until the wedding and everything feels bad when suddently you received a bouquet of your favourite flowers with a note.

"I will not cut you like this flowers, but i will keep you to myself no matter how, with love Your Artist.

You almost broke in tears right there, your mother entered the room with your future husband to finish some business.

They didn't even care to ask you what happened, the just talked about your future like nothing.

One of the servants announced Benedict and everyone on the room turned around.

"I am here to propose."

"Too late, she is my fiancee." you couldn't believe what was happening.

"I double the endowment, my mother and brother approved it."

You know your mother will marry you to the best match she could find, which means the one who could provide more money.

After verifying everything was right, your mother inmediatly sent out your now ex-fiancee and welcomed with open arms your new husband.

"How?" you asked him, still processing.

"I intended to send you that flowers yesterday, i don't know why they got today." he sounded more concerned about his time planning that your tear, "Oh, you mean all the other things, sorry for ignoring you, once you got engaged my family forced me to separate myself to not staint your virtue... so i was convincing them to let me marry you."

"I..." you kissed him on the lips with passion, with all the emotions you've been keeping inside.

"I think we should wait to the weeding night, in a week." your eyes opened surprised while he justs smirks, "I didn't want any longer to kall you mine, so i managed to get a wedding licency too."

"I love you."

"I know, and i love you too."

[jeanbie]

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.