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netegf · 1 year ago

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violet chemistry (ii)

pairing: aged up!ao'nung x f!metkayina reader

plot: you and ao'nung attempt to regain control in your lives by fake-dating. the irony is… this is fated.

word count: 2.7k

a/n: the next instalment in my fake-dating!, friends to lovers!, best friend’s brother!au - once again, this takes place roughly 10 years after atwow - some pining + flirting, made-up rituals, attempts at comedy, & angst (WILL be resolved)! i really hope you enjoy part 2 🥹💖

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In all honesty, Ao’nung has been trying his hardest to avoid you. Only, that impulse is very quickly thwarted when he considers how many clan gatherings and rituals courting Na’vi couples attend together. Sitting before you and the azure clay bowl of paint you hold in your hand, for the first time in a long time, Ao’nung has a single thought. He really hadn’t thought this through.

“Stop moving.” You hum, brows pinched together in concentration as you swirl the coal-coloured paint with a brush much like the baleen of a whale’s mouth. Sitting with the feelings he’s been having, a part of him wonders what it might be like to be suspended in water and consumed entirely into the jaws of a sea beast. He listens almost immediately, then realizes that’s slightly out of character for him, resorting to a slight narrow of the eye that makes him look younger than he is.

“You’re strangely quiet.” Your eyes bore holes into him, but he has a gift for escaping confrontation – staring somewhere off in the distance until his vision blurs.

Ao’nung hopes he looks nonchalant when he shrugs, but knows you. Knows that your keen. He doesn’t know how many times he’s come to communal dinner with a face he thought he’d fixed, but you'd been able to tell there was something off. A mediator of energy; you might as well have been able to smell it off him. But this wasn’t something he could let go of. He might’ve saved his favourite kills for you during the hunt in childhood, but this was profound. Pandora spins on a different axis. Everything looks like it’s in a different colour. How long had he loved his friend?

“Yeah.” He admits, chewing on his bottom lip. “Just worried you’re gonna, y’know… ruin my face for life?”

You roll your eyes with emphasis.

The ritual he refers to is one in which courting Metkayina couples draw facial tattoos for each other in paint, emulating what might one day be permanent. Unfortunately, Ao’nung has known you long enough to know that artistry has not been one of your most obvious gifts, and you pinch your eyes at him as the smug words leave his mouth.

“Shut up.” You hiss. “Or I’ll draw Lo’ak on your cheek.”

“Ambitious goal for an amateur.” He punches back, then nearly recoils.

Ao’nung can feel himself being mean – meaner than usual – and it casts a cloud of shame over him. He really thought he’d passed that point in his life where he masqueraded around his feelings and hacked them up alone until his throat bled. Childish, it felt. Something that gave him grief and gratitude – annoyed at his immaturity, but a strange sense of happiness at the fact that he could afford it. Still, you deserved better, and that pained him.

You grant him a small scoff then continue your ministrations.

Naturally, his eyes come to focus on your eyebrows knitted together, your tongue darting out of your mouth ever so slightly as the artistic vision you have in your mind comes to fruition, the subtle tremor of your careful hands. Instinctively, one of his hands comes up to stabilize yours, gripping the joint of your wrist.

Breath hitching just slightly, you quirk a brow. “You know… if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you look like you’re enjoying this.”

“Gotta get you to my mom.” He mumbles, hand dropping to his side like a dead fly. “Get your eyes checked.”

After a few more strokes of the brush, and a couple dozen eyerolls, the design is finished.

“Done.” You say happily, fingers holding Ao’nung’s chin as you admire your handy work.

The pattern isn’t particularly complex or striking, but it decorates the high points of his face, each dark shape a representation of his achievement and growth as a hunter, as future Olo'eyktan, and your favourite – boy that loves the water.

Ao’nung’s eyes widen when he takes in his reflection.

“It’s, uh… more subtle than I thought it would be.” He says finally, clearing his throat, heat colouring his cheeks a new kind of colour.

He had to admit, it was pretty. He must have imagined what this would feel like a thousand times in his life. That one day, he’d rise to his rank, wear his adornments, and feel completely different. Feel like he was worthy of his position in the clan. To his surprise, time moved fast, but he very rarely did. All Ao’nung felt over the years was a lot of sameness – but today, wearing your tattoos on his face, he felt a sense of pride pang in his chest. He looked the part, and maybe that meant something.

“Well, we can’t have the clan forgetting you’re handsome. However would they stand your prickly temperament?”

Ao’nung feels prepared to roll his eyes at the diss, but then he catches himself. Better yet, he catches you, saying something you hadn’t exactly meant to reveal, but knew to be true nonetheless. He looks at you cautiously.

“You think I’m handsome?”

Chewing your bottom lip, you contemplate for a moment. Was there really anything wrong with admitting it? Just about everyone on the reef thought so, he had to have known that.

“Everyone thinks you’re handsome, Ao.” You try to soothe over the slip-up. “People line up to see you when you come back from the hunt, I think someone fainted when you tamed tsurak, this information can’t be surpris-,”

“But you.” He says quickly, eyes excruciatingly earnest. “You think I’m handsome?”

“Yes…I do.”

Ao’nung supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, and yet he is. He wasn’t a stranger to be being praised for his looks, but this was uncharted territory – a line that had never been crossed, and maybe intentionally so. Since when did you think so? Since when did a compliment for him fall so easily off your pretty lips and tongue like you were the only one he was meant to receive such words from?

You must have noticed his slow blinks and slightly gaping mouth as he thinks through it all, because then you’re saying something that has him absolutely reeling.

“Eywa, if that blows your mind, how are you going to react to the fact that I had a crush on you half my life?”

There’s a hint of humour in your tone, but Ao’nung is having a hard time understanding why it’s so funny – eyes nearly bulging out and erratic breaths practically choking him.

“Had?” He stammers, past-tense poking a hole in his heart. “When?”

“When?” You snort. “Like, forever. Well, until I grew out of it.”

He must look insane, brain jumping from thought to thought, zoning in on words that illuminate a fire in his gut, and others that just as quickly put the fire out in a wade of water that he, for once, does not welcome. A revelation, and the revocation of it. A sparkling jewel in his palm mere seconds before it disintegrates, leaving no trace of what once was, as if it were merely a tantalizing mirage and nothing more.

“When the Sully’s arrived?”

“Yup.” You say too casually for his liking, popping the ‘p’. “And before… and after.”

“But I was so mean.”

He bites his tongue almost bitterly, almost incredulous. He had admirers over the years, sure – but those were souls that knew him from great distance, and there was comfort in that. But you… you knew him. Not just the great triumphs, but the pitfalls which were equal in magnitude and not for the faint hearted. He had to admit, his concept of love was more superficial. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel it, at least not in the way his parents did – in his eyes, they got lucky, and his future partnership was bound to be more political than it was anything else. And maybe that was his crutch, the lack of feeling. Maybe that was the reason he’d never crossed this line, never entertained having you as his.

Because that would be all-consuming. That would be the truest thing he’d ever felt – really a fish out of water like everyone pegged him to be. Painfully new, and painfully beautiful, and completely unrecoverable if it ended up not working out.

Though at this moment, he hates himself for that careful distance between you – the way this is a wound you’ve presumably healed from, while he bleeds out right before your eyes.

“What can I say?” You smile, teasing him in the way you do, the way he loves. “I like a challenge.”

“Right.” He manages, breath still shaky, but the corners of his mouth slowly lifting.

The tide was changing and he needed to find a way to make it stop.

Apparently, his father was right. All those years spent build levees would finally coming to good use.

The night’s festivities are an especially generous feast and a series of dance rituals that you, while hesitant to admit it, know like the back of your hand.

Ao’nung sits with his father and other seasoned hunters in the clan, nodding absentmindedly to their spirited conversation about tracking game, which he admittedly knew very little about.

Really, he smiled when they smiled, stroked his chin when they seemed to debate something, and when he really hadn’t a clue what Tonowari was saying, gave a pretend laugh followed by a silent prayer to the great mother that he wasn’t being informed about someone’s death.

He had more important matters to mull over. Like you, sitting across the fire pit, engrossed in a conversation with his sister.

Entirely too receptive to his gaze, you momentarily stall from your speech to meet his eyes, lips curving into a small smile and hands giving a tentative wave. Ao’nung opts out of waving back but holds his piercing stare, convinced that the rounds of your eyes are more illuminating than the fire – and unlike its embers, your luminosity will stay.

“My son,” Tonowari’s voice booms over the overlapping chatter. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”

Ao’nung nearly chokes, the tips of his ears turning an endearing shade of purple as he realizes he’s been gawking for far too long, and the last topic he recalls listening to was three conversations ago.

“I think, uh… everyone has made some important points.” He mumbles, while you and Tsireya snicker at him from across the fire.

Tonowari quirks an eyebrow at him, but luckily, chooses not to harp on it. He slaps a hand over Ao’nung’s back as if to excuse him from the conversation – not that he was contributing much anyways.

Ao’nung smiles gratefully and quickly makes his way over to you, scratching the back of his neck.

“Was that as embarrassing as I think it was?”

“Even more.” You laugh, scrunching your nose in a teasing kind of sympathy. “But it’s okay, we still love you.”

The ease to which the word ‘love’ falls out of your mouth makes him wince a little – this wasn’t the kind of love he’d found himself craving from you as of late, tossing and turning in his marui when he’s meant to be sleeping, very much aware that he’s awake behind those closed eyelids. He turns to Tsireya.

“Can I borrow her?” He asks as his sister’s eyes swell with intrigue. He feels the need to explain. “For a dance.”

Tsireya nods, a small smirk on her face before she dismisses herself.

“Duty calls?” You ask, shivering as his hands find their place on your hips, the pair of you slowly swaying back and forth to the beat of ceremonial drums. This is a practice for all courting Na’vi couples – they surround you at all sides, clumsily moving their bodies and giggling together, their love almost something physical in the air.

“Something like that.” He mumbles, eyes sheepishly raking over you. “You look nice.”

“I don’t have any extra food, Ao.”

“What? I don’t want your food.” He erupts. “I’m being serious.”

“Oh, okay. In that case, thanks. You look nice, too.”

Ao’nung’s ears perk up, toothy canines peeking out from under his lips in a sideways smile. He hopes the budding violet colour on your cheeks means what he thinks it does.

“So, what have you been up to?”

“Since I saw you this morning?” You repeat, eyebrow slightly raised.

“Yes. I mean, no.” He breathes shakily, rubbing his face in dismay. “Or, you know, in general.”

“Nothing too crazy.” You say softly, a certain lamenting in your voice. “I kind of live in a box, remember?”

Ao’nung nods. He bites the inside of his cheek, thinking for a moment, the heels of his feet burning as he tries to think up a way to make that sad look in your eye disappear.

“But I’m here.” He offers.

“Yeah. You’re here.”

The way your eyes soften as you say words has his heart soaring. He leans in a little closer, the rhythmic buzzing of the percussion reaching a peak. Your mouth parts slightly. It feels like it means something.

But you’re soon interrupted when the music stops and all the couples come to a halt, just the painful empty air of what could’ve been filling the space between you.

Ronal appears from just across the fire-pit as she pulls her son in for a conversation he’s sure he won’t listen to. He mouths a gentle ‘sorry’ before disappearing, leaving you with your thoughts and Tsireya, who takes a seat on the log next to you.

“You two look friendly. Or should I say, more than friendly?” Her grin looks like it could reach her ears it’s so wide.

“It’s pretend.” You remind her dejectedly. “Just because you and Lo’ak are going strong, doesn’t mean you can bring your loved-up vibes over here.”

Tsireya scrunches her nose in displeasure at the English word. It didn’t mean much when Lo’ak used it in conversation, and it didn’t mean much now.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but my brother pretends very poorly.”

Your gaze shifts to where Ao’nung is standing, eyes trained on his mother with a far-away look in his eyes – you have to force yourself to bite back a laugh.

“He doesn’t see me that way, Reya. He never has.” You sigh, chewing on your bottom lip. “And besides, even if he did… I can’t be the mate he needs.”

“You love him, do you not?” She asks, clearly puzzled.

You look at Ao’nung again, now speaking in a small circle of Na’vi.

One member in particular makes your tender heart ache. A young Metkayina woman. She’s a skilled weaver and even better huntress. Beautiful, reliable, eager for leadership and responsibility. Not weighed down by strangeness. Not heavy with unbridled emotion. Strong and loving, in the way he needs – more palatable.

“Maybe love just isn’t enough sometimes.”

“Maybe,” Tsireya’s voice breaks through your spiral. “You are scared.”

Perhaps Tsireya has a point, or perhaps she doesn’t. Regardless, the constricting in your chest is hard to shake off. Even when she softly cups your cheek before walking away. Even when Ao’nung finds a way to escape whatever boring topic of discussion that has it’s claws digging into his sides, and his lips, yearning for yours, again. Small smile teasing at his mouth, he tugs at your hand.

“Hey, maybe we can get them to play a little more? Have another dance?”

“Ao… I think we need to stop. I-I don’t want to do this anymore.”

More than the words, it’s the pain in your eyes that punches him hard in the gut, leaving his lungs gasping for mouthfuls of air that don’t seem to dull the stinging. Your breaths do something similar, chest heaving, fighting every instinct in your body that tells you this is wrong because protecting him feels more important. It’s in that moment that Ao’nung realizes he doesn’t like comparing you to fire. It’s born to die. Warm and hungry, but it’s not for touching and it’s not forever.

His hand leaps forward to catch your shoulder, but you’re bolting before he can follow-through – fingers flinching back from the heat on your skin.

a/n: reblogs + tags are always appreciated 🪐🩷🫶🏼 i hope you enjoyed! how do we feel about part 3? 🤭

#ao'nung x reader #aonung x reader #atwow #aonung #ao'nung #avatar 2 #atwow x reader #sorry for the delay bbs <3 ive been feeling so weird and i wanted to wait until i felt more normal but #i'm not feeling any better so might as well post lmao

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