Neteyam x Ao'nung: in the cover of the leaves

2- One on One Lesson

Neteyam POV:

Im watching the gentle waves from my pod, shallow water runs over my feet and a light breeze compliments the starry night sky. The galaxy isn't as visible from here as it is in the forest, I can barely see the light in the sky that dad says he's from, but the infinite stars, the moons and the clouds are reflected perfectly in the dimly-illuminated dark water. It helps to look into the sky when I feel homesick, reminds me that I could be much further away from home. I've been sitting here for a while, Ao'nung didn't say when he'd be here so I just sat out here as soon as I was sure my parents were asleep. I think it's about midnight, it's not super late but I'm tired from the journey, plus Ive been so restless lately that I've barely caught a wink of sleep. But my eyelids are so heavy, and my eyes are so persistently trying to roll up. These waves are so calming-

Ao'nungs POV:

The sky is beautiful tonight, lit by an imperceivable number of brilliant stars. I approach the Sullys pod, careful to step on the newer, more tightly strung ropes as to not cause creaking. I see Neteyam, but he hasn't noticed me. His bioluminescent freckles glow in the dark, illuminating his strong features. He almost blends in with the night sky, given his skins colour and freckles. He seems to be rocking back and forth. Already falling asleep? I smirk to myself, he's kind of like a little kid. Cute.
He's rocking a lot now, and on the edge of the netting. This will be funny.
One final rock sends him over the edge, I'm only about ten feet away now and I can't help but to laugh, jumping into the water after him.

Neteyams POV:

What the fuck.
I'm startled awake by falling flat on my face into the shallow waves, sand, and terribly sharp rocks.
Worst of all, I hear a splash and familiar laughter erupt above me.
"Fuck." I groan. Propping myself up on my knees and hands I stretch a little, rubbing the shoulder I fell on.
"Little close Forset boy." Ao'nung laughs from above me.
I turn around, wondering what he meant, and see he's standing above me.
"You're the one who's too close, sxawng."
He shrugs a little, smug still plastered, and lifts one leg over me and begins to walk away.
"Wait up!" I whisper as loudly as I think possibleas to not wake my family. I scramble to my feet and begin to chase after him in the shallows, watching his broad backs freckles reflect the light.
"Hey." I call to him.
"Hmm?" He hums in response.
"For a dude your hips sure do sway a lot when you walk." I notice.
"What?" He responds, whipping around to look at me. "At least I don't... At least I don't have a little baby tail!" He responds flabbergasted, before turning around and running off, laughing.

"Wait up Shakira!" I call to him, picking up my own pace. Does he even know who Shakira is? Skxawng.

After a while of running we're back on land, but we're somewhere new. Were on a large stretch of land, littered with flowers and other plants, the soft ground soothing the soles of my feet.

"Where are we going?" I ask, starting to become out of breath after near sprinting for at least five minutes straight.

"Just a little further." He responds from ahead.

It feels like we'll never get there when I run straight into his back, falling backwards on impact.

"You can't possibly be that stupid." He smirks, eyeing me like usual.

"Fuck off." I laugh off, starting to stand. He extends an arm but instead of letting me grab his hand he grabs my arm, pulls me half way up, and then drops me again. "Skxawng." Is all I grimace before using my body weight to throw him to the ground in a leaping motion.
We roll around like this for a minute, laughing and play fighting. Then, suddenly, I'm thrown into a body of water, inhaling half of the liquid the moment I'm submerged.
I stand to catch my breath, coughing up the once cool water, when Ao'nung jumps on me, tacking me into the chin height water. He moves gracefully through the water, if we were to really fight I'd be done for. Wait,what if I pretend I'm drowning? That'll get him, I'm sure he's got a sensitive side in there. While he's still above me in the water, nearly holding me down on the bottom of the ground laughing, a pretend to convulce, clawing at my throat and sending up as many bubbles as possible. His joyful face quickly turns to one of worry and I see him mouth 'oh shit.' before wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me back onto land. He threw me up first, his arms still under my back, and I continued to fake cough. He crawls up over top of me and drags me back into the grass.
"Ao'nung please-" I say through fake gasps.
He looks pretty stressed, I should wrap this up.

"What am I supposed to do." He half shouted, his hands coming up to grab his hair.

"Tell my family-" I trail off.

"No don't die you skxawng. Tell them yourself. You were only under for less than a minute!" He panics.

"Tell them... That your a dumb bitch." I look at him with ashit eating grin. His panicked face relaxes for a moment before morphing into an evil smile and he jumps on me, tussling once more. We continue for a moment before stopping out of breath. Hes over me, forearms on the ground and his face maybe a foot above mine, panting. I see his eyes glance up and down once more, I don't think he's ever seen Na'vi that aren't Metkayina before us, we must seem interesting to him.

"Sooo... About that lesson." He mumbled quickly, shooting up into s tanding position. Yeah, I forgot about that.

"What were you gonna teach me?" I ask, rocking myself into a criss-cross sitting position, hands held in my lap.

"Nothing special really, I wasn't sure what I could teach you without others finding out so I just took you here and hoped I'd figure it out along the way. Didn't work out too well, huh." He sighs the last part. "This is one of my favourite spots, my dad used to take me near here when I was little, but I found it by myself." A small smile graces the corners of his lips, much more genuine than usual, I think he's reminiscing. It's a lot of stress being the next in line, so those stress free moments of childhood can really mean a lot.

I look up, taking in the environment around me, truly,for the first time. It's more like the forests back home here, although the leaves are longer and are situated in trees with less branches. The plants on the ground reflect the lights of the sky beautifully, although they aren't bioluminescent like the ones back home. We're in a small clearing, and looking to my left I see the body of water we had just been in. A calm lake with a gentle river flowing to and feeding it, pressumably from a larger body of water further off, continues off further into the wooded area. I crawl over to the water and look into it; the calm surface acts as a nearly perfect mirror, but the bottom of the lake also emits a strong teal light, illuminating everything visible in its reflections. I see Ao'nungs face appear beside mine in the surface, he's thinking.
"I could teach you about gathering, what's edible and stuff." He speaks.
"That'd be nice." I respond, turning my head around to look at him. He's less mischievous then usual when it's just us, he still is but he's ... Nicer? He's more teasing than straight up rude around me.
He offers a hand to help me up but by the grin on his face, he has a terrible poker face, I can tell hes just gonna repeat his previous action so I decide to get up on my own. He trails me further in to the tropical forest, showing me plenty of edible plants and berries along the way, it seems that very little here is inedible.

"This is one of the few plants you have to worry about." He says clearly, with a more stern and serious expression. He's pointing to a small bush of round, purple berries with red leaves. "We call them blood fruit because when you chew them they eat away at your insides, causing you to pukes up blood until they turn you into a pe of mush from the inside out." He finishes by mimicking a person puking and half-assedly rolling around in agony.

"I'll be sure to watch out for them; that seems like a terrible way to die." I twist my face at the image formed in my head from his description.

We meander through the forest for a little while longer, it feels much more homey here. But all good things must come to an end, and the sun is threatening to rise.

"I should be getting back now, my father will wake up soon." I state, my eyes on the ground.

"Okay, I should be getting back too." He yawns, stretching his arms up and making himself appear even bigger than before.

"See you in a bit?" I ask curiously, looking up at him through my brow.

"If I can wake up, yeah." He confirms with another light smile.

"We can walk back together though, right? I'm not sure I know the way back." I ask, rubbing the back of my neck.

"You're like a lost puppy." He laughs a little, starting to lead the way back. I like looking at his back.

A/N: Hiya! Hope y'all are enjoying the story so far. Again, if y'all notice any spelling or grammar errors feel free to comment them (I don't have the time to edit lmao), same goes for writing reccs; for the most part this story will be to my taste but I always love a good input from the readers. Also, I write this all on my phone so I'm sorry about any consequences of that😭. Love y'all!

-Banana