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Lo’ak slams his fist on the door to Spider’s room. “Wake up!” He yells, receiving a pointed look from Max down the hallway.
“You know the rules,” Max tuts, opening a closet and removing some supplies. Lo’ak sucks in a breath from his breather. It tasted nothing like the fresh open air, but at least it wasn’t the stale filtered air of the building.
“I thought that was a lab rule,” Lo’ak argues. “This is the dormitory hallway, not the lab.”
“From now on, all ‘lab rules’ are considered ‘inside rules.’”
“That’s racist.” Lo’ak huffs without any real heat.
“Asking you not to yell is racist?” Max raises an eyebrow. Lo’ak bangs on Spider’s door again and sticks his tongue out at Max. The older scientist sighs and unclips a lanyard attached to a keycard from his pocket, chucking it over to Lo’ak.
Lo’ak catches the keycard and immediately jams it into the door. “You’re the best, Max.” Lo’ak forces the widest grin he can manage, squinting his eyes at Max. He didn’t understand why humans locked doors, anyways. He couldn’t fathom not sleeping in a pile of siblings each night. Sleeping in a hammock before moving to high camp was nice and all, but nothing beat elbowing Kiri in the back after she unconsciously kicks him in her sleep.
Lo’ak slams open the door to Spider’s room. “Hello - oh, what the hell?” Lo’ak freezes and does a double take. Spider is leaning over the sink in the corner of his room, staring at the small mirror. He turns around and Lo’ak blinks at him. There’s a white… paste (?) spread across Spider’s jaw and around his mouth. Spider holds a little tool in his hand. “What are you doing?”
“Shaving,” Spider deadpans. “I’ll be ready to go out soon, I’ve just got to finish up here.”
Lo’ak blinks. He knew some scientists grew facial hair, however strange the concept was to him, but he never questioned how they got rid of it. Lo’ak supposes he’s always just accepted that some of the humans had facial hair and some didn’t.
In his stupor, Lo’ak begins to feel a bit lightheaded. Shit. He takes another breath from his breather. Lo’ak walks closer and looks at the apparatus in Spider’s hand. It doesn’t look like the blade his father uses to shave the side of his head, but it must work similarly.
“It’s a razor,” Spider explains. “There’s a replaceable blade inside.”
“Interesting,” Lo’ak comments. An idea comes into his head. “Do me next.” He sinks to his knees, almost at eye level with Spider this way.
“What?” Spider whirls back in confusion. “You don’t have facial hair.” Spider returns to staring at the mirror, guiding the razor down his face and wicking away the foam that gathers on the razor under a light stream of water coming from his tap.
“I mean my eyebrows,” Lo’ak rolls his eyes. Spider’s almost finished shaving by now.
“Why?”
“Real Na’vi don’t have them.” As it was, Kiri, Lo’ak and his father were the only Na’vi to have eyebrows and five fingers. Norm and a few of the other scientists had eyebrows and five fingers, but that didn’t count since they were only Avatars.
“You are a real Na’vi.” There’s an uncomfortable undertone in Spider’s voice that Lo’ak chooses to ignore.
“Ugh, that’s not what I meant.” Lo’ak groans. Only, that is what he meant, but he knew Spider was more self-conscious than even he was, so he dropped the matter. "You paint stripes on,” Lo’ak points out.
“Yeah but you’re already,” Spider waves a hand and gestures to Lo’ak’s whole frame. “You know.”
“Pleeeeeaaaase? Bro don’t make me beg.” Lo’ak whines, hands clasped together. Spider looks at him blankly. “They’ll grow back.”
“Fine.” Spider sighs and begins the process of removing the blade from the razor, swapping it out with a new one.
“Yes!” Lo’ak’s ears perk at small footsteps approaching the hallway outside of Spider’s dorm. Tuk. Spider doesn’t hear anything and passes Lo’ak a spray can of something.
“What’s this? The pasta?” Lo’ak didn’t really understand the reason Spider smeared the shit across his face. He reads the can, slowly sounding out the letters.
Lo’ak remembers learning to read English. It wasn’t due to his father’s insistence or his mother’s, for that matter. Actually, it was Norm who suddenly realised one day that nobody had taught Spider, who had been eleven years old already, how to read. Then Norm had suggested Lo’ak’s father teach Spider along with his other children. Then his father had sheepishly revealed that he’d forgotten that reading was a taught skill and hadn’t thought to teach any of them.
Which led to an eleven-year-old Spider, ten-year-old Neteyam, and nine-year-olds Kiri and Lo’ak learning to read over the course of a week. Sure, he read slowly, but at least he could read.
Lo’ak’s ears follow the sound of Tuk knocking and jiggling the handle of every door down the hallway. Of course, she’d forgotten where Spider’s dorm was.
“I think you mean paste, and no, it’s shaving gel. Put some over your eyebrows and it should froth up,” Spider corrects. Lo’ak takes another breath from his breather and squirts a greenish-blue paste onto his finger.
There’s a knock at the door and the handle jiggles from the inside. It opens. Shit, he must’ve left the keycard in the door.
Tuk approaches just as Lo’ak is spreading the gel across either eyebrow. It foams upon being spread.
“What are you doing?” Tuk asks, her hand holding the mouthpiece of a breather while the rest dangles on the floor behind her. It hits the closing door on her way in.
“Shaving,” Lo’ak grins. Her tail is flicking restlessly behind her - she’s bored.
“You guys are taking forever!” Tuk hauls herself onto Spider’s bed and starts jumping.
“How long are we taking?” Lo’ak asks with amusement. Spider raises the razor to Lo’ak’s eyebrows and Lo’ak squeezes his eyes shut. Nothing happens.
“Like, infinity minutes!” Tuk whines and Lo’ak opens his eyes.
“I can’t, Lo’ak,” Spider says apologetically and shakes his head. “I don’t want to accidentally cut you.”
“Don’t hurt him!” Tuk says fearfully and stops jumping. She jumps off the bed and goes to inspect Lo’ak.
“He won’t,” Lo’ak reassures. “Na’vi have thicker skin, remember?” Lo’ak gives the blade another look and doubts it would be able to break his skin by accident. It might if Spider was looking to actually cut him.
“Okay,” Tuk shrugs, taking her brother’s word as law. She suddenly pouts again. “Hurry up! I want to go play.”
“Yeah, hurry up Spider.”
“Okay, okay!” Spider gently presses Lo’ak’s head against the wall as to keep it steady. Lo’ak closes his eyes again and feels the cool metal swipe across his eyebrows a couple of times. There’s the sound of the can from earlier, the feel of more gel across his eyebrows and once again the feel of metal. Eventually, he hears running water from Spider’s tap and a small towel is pressed to his forehead.
“Done,” Spider says. Lo’ak opens his eyes.
“You look the same,” Tuk looks at him closely. “What a waste of time. Can we go play, now?”
“But I don’t have eyebrows anymore.” Lo’ak positions himself towards the small mirror in Spider’s room. He looks… like himself without eyebrows. It’s kind of disappointing, he really doesn’t know what he was expecting.
He doesn’t know how to feel about it.
Tuk gives a shrug as her only answer. She grabs a hold of his tail and begins to drag it towards the door.
“Alright, alright, I’m coming!” Lo’ak grabs his tail lower than Tuk and snatches it out of her grasp. Spider follows them out of the laboratory where Kiri and Neteyam are already waiting for them.
“You sent Tuk to get us?” Lo’ak huffs.
Kiri’s about to respond when she takes one look at Lo’ak and freezes. She barks out a laugh. Tuk begins to giggle and Lo’ak sends a betrayed look her way.
“Wait, what’s funny?” Neteyam asks her. Lo’ak is somewhat stupefied. Did Neteyam truly not notice?
“By Eywa, can you not see?” Kiri asks Neteyam between laughs. “Where are his eyebrows?”
Neteyam’s gaze shoots directly to Lo’ak’s forehead, which he suddenly wants to hide. This was a stupid idea, even Spider begins to look amused at his expense.
“You got rid of your eyebrows?” Neteyam’s eyes widen with scepticism.
“Cool, right?” Lo’ak says rather defensively. He did not, in fact, think it was cool anymore. Removing his eyebrows felt a lot cooler before he did it, anyways. It was actually kind of itchy, was that normal?
“If you think so,” is Neteyam’s dubious reply. Neteyam wipes his mouth with the back of his hand which looks suspiciously like a motion used to hide laughter. Neteyam clears his throat.
“No,” Kiri laughs. “Lo’ak looks totally weird now!”
“I was against it.” Spider joins in. Tuk laughs even louder.
Lo’ak hisses at Spider, the traitor. Spider had been against it, sure, but he didn’t say it was strange! Everyone only seems to laugh at him even harder, now.
“Tuk,” Lo’ak whinges. “Why are you laughing? You weren’t before.” She was hardly even interested in it before.
“I didn’t know it was funny, before!” Tuk sticks her tongue out at him.
“Brat,” Lo’ak huffs. Tuk launches herself on his back in response.
“Alright everybody,” Neteyam, ever the mediator, breaks up the laughter. “Let’s go, we haven’t got all day.”
“Lo’ak shaved his eyebrows!” Tuk giggles. She runs directly to her father and jumps on his shoulders, interrupting him as he cuts up oddly uneven cubes of meat. Jake looks over his shoulder and regards Tuk with a sceptical look.
“Lo’ak did what now?” Jake raises an eyebrow and watches as the rest of his children come inside. True to word, Lo’ak walks in without his eyebrows. Neteyam follows him with a straight face. It looks like he’s forcing back a smile. Kiri seems to have no qualms in showing her mirth, giggling uncontrollably at the looks on her parents’ faces.
Silence falls over them as Neytiri and Jake regard their youngest son with impassive looks. Neteyam seems unable to hold in his amusement as he breaks into a coughing fit that sounds suspiciously like laughter.
“How’s um,” Neteyam coughs again, choking on a laugh. “How’s dinner going?”
Neytiri sends Jake a look and mutters something under her breath in Na’vi. Lo’ak backs into a corner where his sleeping mat is and hangs his head low. He looks away from the centre of their unit, purposefully allowing a shadow to hide his face.
“Kiri, Neteyam, cut these.” Neytiri stands up, pulling Jake away from his cutting board. There are bits of whole fruits on her board and meats on Jake’s. Neteyam and Kiri automatically move to take over working on dinner, both sharing a conspiratorial look.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Kiri whispers to Neteyam. Lo’ak hisses at Kiri who does nothing but laugh at the motion. “Mum’s so grounding you.”
“Hey!” Jake intervenes. He removes Tuk from his shoulders and passes her to sit in Lo’ak’s lap. Tuk, unable to sit still, begins rearranging her limbs so as to climb atop Lo’ak’s shoulders, who struggles under the weight a bit more than Jake does. “Nobody is in any trouble.”
Neytiri grasps Jake’s arm and pulls them out of their home, dragging him away so they’re out of earshot, even then, Jake has long discovered that he must keep his voice low. Na’vi, especially Na’vi children, had sensitive ears.
“Hey, go easy on him. He’s just a kid,” Jake whispers to Neytiri. He honestly hadn’t thought that much about Lo’ak missing his eyebrows. He had to stifle a laugh, actually, reminding himself that teenagers, Na’vi and human alike, did silly things in rebellion. Lo’ak was thirteen, now, and it had only been a matter of time before the fire of adolescence kindled within him. “Nobody got hurt.”
“MyJake, our son is ashamed of being different,” Neytiri huffs. Her ears point backwards in thinly veiled anger.
“He’s a kid,” Jake implores. “They’re sensitive to that kind of stuff. He’ll grow out of it.”
Neytiri tuts and shakes her head. “What if Lo’ak takes it further? What if we find him one day holding a severed fifth finger with a bleeding hand?”
Jake flinches. He had to admit, that was sort of a leap from shaving one's eyebrows. Neytiri must’ve had this fear simmering inside of herself for a while. Lo’ak probably only cemented her fears with his shaved eyebrows.
“You’re overreacting,” Jake tries to grab her arm in a comforting motion. From what he could tell, Lo’ak wasn’t self-loathing, he wouldn’t do something as drastic as removing a finger, right? He might be a little self-conscious, but it was nothing alarming - nothing that wouldn’t go away on its own as he got older. But… on the other hand, it would be a good idea to address the issue before it could have a chance to fester into something self-destructive.
“I am not!” Neytiri hisses, tearing her arm away. Her tail flicks in annoyance. “Go and talk to your son.”
“My son?” Jake raises an eyebrow, but he knows what she means. He’s the reason his son has eyebrows (or had eyebrows) and five fingers, it would only make sense if he approached Lo’ak. They were in similar boats on this particular topic.
“He’s your son when he does something stupid,” Neytiri says pointedly, her shoulders relax and her ears soften. Jake finds he can’t rebut her claim, Lo’ak is painfully his son, especially when Lo’ak behaves in a way that infuriates him. His son is so insistent on helping, doing right and protecting others that it makes it hard for Jake to protect him. He’s a kid, the sky-people have returned as of a few weeks ago and Jake is terrified of losing him.
“I’ll talk to him,” Jake promises. Neytiri softens her gaze and they press their foreheads together. “I’ll get him,” Neytiri murmurs, pulling away from him and returning to their tent. Not a moment later does he see Neytiri exit the tent with Lo’ak. She points Lo’ak in the direction of Jake. His youngest son walks with quick strides, shoulders hunched and ears pinned to the side of his head.
“It’s just hair,” Lo’ak grumbles irritably when he approaches Jake. He begins pacing nervously. “If I knew it was going to be such a big deal, I wouldn’t have shaved it.” Lo’ak kicks a rock and huffs. Lo’ak doesn’t seem to be particularly forthcoming at the moment, spouting what he guesses Jake wants to hear. “I’m sorry, sir. Can we go back to dinner, now?”
“I’m not angry at you,” Jake frowns at his youngest son.
Lo’ak stops pacing and gives Jake a confused look. “Then what’s this about?”
“Your eyebrows,” Jake says, staring at his son’s forehead. He didn’t look unnatural without them, but it was odd - different. The place where his eyebrows used to be are a slight shade lighter than the rest of his forehead, barely noticeable, but the longer Jake looks, the more obvious it is.
“Yes, obviously,” Lo’ak groans. He must have noticed Jake’s staring because he sits down on the rocky ground and covers his face with his hands.
“Your mother doesn’t like it,” Jake begins, because honestly, he has no reservations about the situation himself.
“Okay,” Lo’ak acknowledges slowly and removes his hands from his face, tilting his head to the side.
“She thinks you might cut your own finger off,” Jake tells him, his eyes fixed on Lo’ak to gauge his reaction. It’s a bit of a lie, Jake doesn’t think Neytiri actually believes Lo’ak’s going to cut his own finger off, it was probably more of an irrational fear, but Jake’s not amazing with words, he never has been, and he doesn’t know how else to break into the topic.
“What?” Lo’ak’s ears shoot right up and he furls his hands closer to himself. His tail whips uncomfortably left and right, alarmed. “I wouldn’t do that!” He looks a little sick at the idea. Jake unwillingly sighs in relief and the distant fear dissipates somewhat. “Dad, I promise you, by Eywa, I would never do that.”
“That’s good,” Jake swallows. “I’m glad.” A beat passes while Jake carefully picks how to approach the situation, the crux of it. “Your mother thinks - we think that you’re ashamed of your eyebrows. Ashamed of your fingers, of being different.”
“Okay,” Lo’ak says slowly. He doesn’t try to deny his father’s words. Something squeezes painfully inside of Jake’s chest at his son’s dejected look. “I know I’m different from the other kids. Freaky. Gross.”
“Because you’re my son?” There’s a silent, hidden accusation in there that Jake cannot keep out of his voice. Am I ‘gross’,too, then? What of Kiri?
“That’s different,” Lo’ak’s ears fold close to his head in shame. Lo’ak avoids eye contact with him. “You’re Toruk Makto.”
“Being Toruk Makto didn’t make me Na’vi,” Jake corrects softly. “I learned the ways of the Omaticaya and passed the trials. Your grandmother interpreted the will of Eywa and I was welcomed into the tribe.”
“That’s not the… point,” Lo’ak brings his shoulders up and drops his head. “I know I’m Omaticaya, shit, at this point, Spider’s practically Omaticaya.”
“So what’s wrong, kid?”
Lo’ak curls his fingers in, hiding them. Jake takes his son’s arms, gently unfurling his fingers apart and holding his hands. He crouches and looks Lo’ak in the eyes.
“Some of the other kids call me a freak. Not a true Na’vi.” Lo’ak tries to shrug nonchalantly, but Jake knows his son. It bothered him.
“Who cares?” Jake scoffs before he can stop himself. He winces once he catches the flash of shame that graces his son’s face. Wrong thing to say.
“What?” There’s disbelief and fear on his son's face. Jake curses himself for dismissing his son’s fear, that wasn’t his intention. He just thought the notion of his son being anything less than Na’vi was ridiculous. Those ‘other kids’ were doubtless the children of a few of the clan who had only begrudgingly accepted Jake due to Toruk Makto.
Jake tries a different route. Obviously, Lo’ak cares about being called a freak, it was stupid of Jake to disregard his son’s feelings on the matter. “Why do you care if they think you’re a freak?” Jake asks, not because he needs the answer, but because he needs Lo’ak to realise the root of his own fear.
“I don’t know,” Lo’ak admits, mumbling. There’s a flush of something unidentifiable in his tone. “I just want them to like me, I guess.”
“Some people just won’t like you,” Jake says plainly, and it was true. In all walks of Jake’s life, there had always been some huge asshole that for some reason or another didn’t like him. There wasn’t anything he could do to change their mind and he’d long learned that he was just wasting his breath if he tried.
“Why?” Lo’ak looks at him, his head tilted with curious blinking yellow eyes.
“Because they’re assholes,” Jake shrugs simply. Now that coaxes a laugh out of Lo’ak. Honestly, Jake didn’t really mind that Lo’ak had shaved his eyebrows, people did loads of stupid things in the name of vanity but he didn’t want his son doing something just because he felt an obligation to fit in. “I’m not going to tell you to stop shaving your eyebrows, nor am I going to forbid it, but I want to ask you something.”
“Alright,” Lo’ak nods. He seemed to relax a little after Jake’s last sentence.
“Do you think Kiri should shave her eyebrows?”
“No.” Lo’ak shakes his head vehemently. Jake knew that Kiri had felt every bit as self-conscious as Lo’ak did, although she did a great job of hiding it. She’d never gone ahead and shaved her eyebrows, though. Jake tucks away the thought and vows to himself to have a similar conversation with her next.
“Why not?” Jake challenges. Lo’ak seems to struggle to find an answer that isn’t hypocritical. He ploughs on. “If somebody ever gives you shit for your fingers, you defend yourself, you hear me, son? Because not only are they giving you shit for your fingers, they’re also giving Kiri shit for her fingers.” Maybe this was the push his son needed because if Lo’ak couldn’t relate to Jake due to his status as Toruk Makto, he should be able to relate to Kiri. “I know Kiri will sit there and take it, but you’re a fighter, alright? You’ll fight for the both of you, got it?”
“So...” Realisation dawns on Lo’ak, his eyes widening.
“So it means, if anybody cares about your fingers, if anybody asks to see them, you do this,” Jake folds his son's fingers so that only the middle finger and thumb are standing. “And that’s an order.”
Lo’ak mimics the action on his other hand and looks at his hands with his brows (forehead?) raised. “Like this?” Lo’ak looks to him for confirmation. Jake can sense the doubt in his son's voice.
“Yeah,” Jake says, pride filling his voice. “Just like that. It means ‘fuck off,’ yeah?”
“Okay,” Lo’ak laughs, a wide smile forming across his face. Lo’ak balls his hands into fists and repeats the motion of flipping his middle fingers up with his palms facing towards himself.
“Just don’t go showing that to Norm or the other scientists, okay?” Jake squeezes his son on the shoulder. It would be sort of amusing to receive correspondence from the science-guys complaining about being flipped off by a thirteen-year-old Na’vi, but Neytiri would doubtless be less amused by it than Jake.
“No promises,” Lo’ak says. Jake stands up from his crouch and Lo’ak gets up from his ass. They both begin to walk back to their home. He can smell meats being cooked. Dinner should be ready soon enough. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to shave my eyebrows again.”
“Hm?”
“It’s weird,” Lo’ak shrugs nonchalantly. He says it with such conviction that Jake believes it. “Eyebrows are weird but I think I look weirder without them.”
“You sure do, kid.”
“Hey!”