Hi! Can you please write more dad!neteyam x reader where a boy likes their daughter (who is of courting age) and he is short circuiting and both neytiri and Jake find this hilarious because he was way worse trying to court mom!reader? Thank you!
He’s Just Like His Father
Pairing: Neteyam x Reader
Neteyam realizes something is wrong the moment he sees the boy.
It is not because the boy is rude. He does not look rude.
It is not because the boy is dangerous. He does not look dangerous either.
It is because the boy is standing a little too neatly near the edge of the clearing, holding a small woven charm in both hands like he practiced what to do with them, and because your daughter is smiling at him in that soft, shy way that Neteyam has spent seventeen years learning to fear.
He is carrying a bundle of tools in one hand, fresh from helping the hunters repair gear, and the entire world seems to narrow into one terrible, simple shape: a boy, flowers, and his daughter.
Then he hears your voice beside him.
He turns his head very slowly.
You are watching him with the beginning of a smile already forming, because you have seen the exact moment his soul leave his body.
“What is it?” you ask innocently.
He does not look away from the boy. “Who is that.”
You glance over, then back at him, and the smile you have been trying to hide becomes very visible.
“Oh,” you say softly. “You noticed.”
Neteyam’s tail flicks once, sharply. “I noticed.”
Your daughter,who is very much old enough to court now, a fact Neteyam finds deeply offensive on its own,laughs at something the boy says. It is not a loud laugh. It is worse than that. It is a real one. The kind that means she is comfortable, curious, interested.
Neteyam’s grip on the tools tightens.
You follow his gaze and then gently nudge his arm. “Breathe.”
He looks at you, offended by the implication that his body is no longer under his control. “I am fine.”
You make a soft noise of disbelief. “You do not look fine.”
From across the clearing, Jake’s voice booms out.
“Why is he standing like that?”
Neteyam closes his eyes for one brief second, already knowing this is about to become everyone’s business.
He opens them again to find Jake grinning from the other side of the firepit, arms folded, eyes bright with the kind of amusement only a man who has survived his children can have.
Neytiri is beside him, calm as ever, but her mouth is doing that dangerous almost-smile that means she has already decided this will be funny.
Jake points at Neteyam’s frozen posture. “Son, you look like you just saw a thanator in your kitchen.”
“I did not,” Neteyam says automatically.
“You kinda did,” Jake says, looking delighted. “That’s the ‘my daughter is being looked at by a boy’ face.”
Neteyam straightens, horrified. “I do not have such a face.”
You fold your arms, thoroughly enjoying yourself now. “You absolutely do.”
He turns to you with the full force of betrayed son, brother, mate, father energy all at once. “You are supposed to help me.”
“I am helping,” you say, far too amused. “By letting you suffer a little.”
Neytiri’s eyes flick to the boy, then to your daughter, then back to Neteyam. “She is smiling.”
Neteyam turns toward her, as if this is an emergency report. “I can see that.”
Jake snorts. “Yeah, and you’re about to pass out.”
“I am not going to pass out.”
“You’re about to challenge him to a duel over eye contact,” Jake says.
You lift one eyebrow. “You would at least consider it.”
Neteyam opens his mouth. Closes it.
Jake laughs so hard he has to bend at the waist. “He would consider it.”
Neytiri gives her mate one look that says he should be grateful she is not laughing openly. “You were worse.”
Jake points at her instantly. “Hey, I was romantic.”
Neytiri’s expression does not change. “You forgot your own name when you came to ask me to court you.”
Jake makes a wounded sound. “I did not forget my name.”
“You forgot all language,” she says.
Neteyam slowly turns his head toward his father. “You were not helpful.”
Jake straightens, offended. “I was charming.”
Neytiri glances at him. “You were sweating.”
Neteyam looks between them like he has just realized with fresh horror that he inherited this entire family.
The boy across the clearing says something to your daughter again, and she tips her head and smiles. Actually smiles.
Neteyam’s hand lifts toward his chest as if he has been struck.
You catch his wrist before he can do anything dramatic.
He looks down at your hand on his arm. Then at you.
“Do not,” you warn softly.
He stares. “I was not going to do anything.”
“You were going to do something.”
“I was going to walk over there.”
Jake makes a wheezing sound. “He’s lying to himself now.”
Neytiri is openly looking between Neteyam and the boy with deep, maternal amusement. “You should have seen him.”
Jake points immediately at Neteyam. “Oh, this is gold. Tell her.”
Neytiri glances at her son. “He asked me how to speak to your mother.”
Neteyam’s ears go red at once. “Mother.”
Jake’s grin goes feral. “He did.”
Neteyam’s voice drops into a warning tone. “Father.”
Jake ignores him with the confidence of a man who has long since made peace with the fact that his son will never be spared. “He practiced for three days.”
Your eyes widen. “Three days?”
Jake nods solemnly. “He walked around like a haunted man. Kept asking me if it was weird to say ‘hello’ or if that sounded too casual.”
Neteyam covers his face with one hand. “Stop speaking.”
Neytiri, because she loves her son but not enough to save him from this, adds, “He could not eat.”
You turn to Neteyam, shocked. “You could not eat?”
Jake points at him. “Two bites.”
Neteyam mutters, “I was younger.”
You put a hand to your mouth, smiling now despite yourself. “You were that bad?”
Jake laughs. “Bad? No. He was catastrophic.”
Neteyam’s face goes even redder. “Father.”
Jake nods toward him. “You stood outside her marui for so long trying to work up the nerve that I thought you were guarding it.”
Neytiri folds her arms, still clearly amused. “He asked me whether ‘my heart is pounding’ was a suitable thing to say to a woman.”
You laugh so hard you nearly fold in half. “No.”
Jake points. “Yes! He did that!”
Neteyam looks like he would rather be swallowed by the earth. “I was trying to be respectful.”
“You were trying to survive,” Jake says.
Neytiri’s smile is small but victorious. “He was very nervous.”
You look up at Neteyam, still laughing through the embarrassment. “You were more nervous than he is?”
Jake and Neytiri answer in perfect unison, “You were.”
Neteyam closes his eyes and mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a prayer.
That only makes Jake grin wider. “This is amazing.”
“Father,” Neteyam says again, voice tight. “Enough.”
But then the boy across the clearing does something innocent and absolutely devastating: he lifts the little woven charm in his hands and offers it to your daughter.
And smiles like the whole world has just gone warm.
His shoulders go rigid. His jaw sets. His eyes narrow not in anger, exactly, but in that state of intense calculation reserved for danger, predators, and apparently young men with nervous hands and nice manners.
You lean closer to him. “Easy.”
He does not look at you. “I am easy.”
Jake mutters, “He’s doing that voice.”
You glance over. “What voice?”
“The ‘I’m absolutely fine and not about to scare a child’ voice.”
Neteyam whips around. “I would never scare a child.”
Jake raises both brows. “Your son cried once because you looked at him while he lied.”
“That was intimidation,” Jake says cheerfully.
Neytiri’s mouth twitches again.
Your daughter laughs softly at something the boy says, and the sound makes Neteyam’s ears flatten.
You watch him struggle with the exact expression of a father who wants to be calm, should be calm, and is losing a dangerous argument with his own emotions.
Then, because you love him and because you also enjoy making him suffer a little, you ask, “What are you thinking?”
Neteyam answers too honestly and too fast.
“I am thinking his shoulders are too close to yours.”
Neteyam closes his eyes in regret the second the words leave him.
You stare at him. “Neteyam.”
He looks miserable. “I know.”
“His shoulders are too close?”
He drags a hand down his face. “That is not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
Jake points at him. “He meant, ‘I am dying.’”
Neteyam looks at his father with open betrayal. “You are making this worse.”
“I am making it funnier.”
Neytiri turns to you, calm and wise and absolutely enjoying this. “He was the same.”
You look at her. “When he courted me?”
Jake laughs. “No, worse.”
Neteyam whips to his father again, scandalized. “Father.”
Jake lifts his hands. “Oh, I was worse? Fine. I’ll tell her.”
Your eyebrows lift. “Tell me.”
Jake grins at Neteyam with the kind of malice only a father can have. “Your mother had to tell him to stop pacing because he wore a circle into the ground outside her marui.”
You gasp, laughing. “No!”
Jake continues, delighted by his own suffering. “He asked me whether it was disrespectful to bring her fruit because she might think he was trying too hard.”
You turn to Neteyam, horrified and entertained. “You worried about fruit?”
Neteyam mutters, “It mattered.”
Jake points. “He practiced saying your mother’s name three different ways because he thought one sounded too eager.”
You can barely breathe from laughing now. “Neteyam.”
“I was trying to be careful.”
Jake nods. “And then he showed up looking like he’d been hit by lightning.”
Neytiri’s eyes go warm with the memory. “He could not speak.”
Neteyam says flatly, “I spoke.”
Jake leans toward you, stage-whispering, “He said ‘hello’ like he was asking for permission to exist.”
You are laughing so hard now that your daughter glances toward you. The boy beside her turns too, curious, and immediately notices her father.
The poor boy goes visibly nervous the instant he realizes the future Olo’eyktan is standing there staring like a storm cloud with good cheekbones.
The boy says something to your daughter, then glances toward Neteyam politely.
It is, somehow, the most terrifying nod on the continent.
The boy straightens at once.
“You see that?” he whispers to Neytiri. “He’s doing it again.”
Neytiri’s shoulders are shaking now. “He cannot help it.”
“I know,” Jake says, laughing. “That’s why it’s funny.”
Neteyam turns on both of them, face burning. “Why are you like this.”
Jake answers with infuriating ease. “Because I remember being young and stupid.”
Neteyam narrows his eyes. “You are still stupid.”
Jake points a finger at him. “And yet you inherited my worst habits.”
Neteyam goes very still, then looks back at the boy, then at your daughter, and visibly tries to repair his dignity in real time.
You touch his arm again. “She is smiling because he is kind.”
Neteyam’s voice is lower now. “I know.”
“You are allowed to know that and still be her father.”
You soften. “You don’t need to threaten him just because she likes talking to him.”
“You sound like you do not know that.”
He sighs. “I know it in theory.”
Jake snorts. “Oh, he’s doomed.”
Neytiri nods. “Completely.”
Then, because the universe apparently wants to keep humiliating him, your daughter glances over and sees the look on her father’s face.
She smiles at him brightly and waves.
Neteyam’s entire demeanor changes.
“Tell me,” he says to you, suddenly and urgently, “does he know how to fish?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Does he know how to fish?”
Jake makes a choking sound. “He’s not asking for a reason.”
Neteyam looks offended. “I am asking because I want to know.”
Neytiri answers for you, amused. “He knows enough.”
Neteyam’s jaw tightens. “Enough is not a reassuring answer.”
You laugh softly and step closer, lowering your voice. “You are adorable when you panic.”
He looks at you with utter betrayal. “Do not call me adorable.”
You smile sweetly and tap his chest once. “You were worse than this.”
And finally, with the long-suffering resignation of a man who knows he has been defeated by his own family, he mutters, “I hate all of you.”
Jake claps him on the shoulder. “No, you don’t.”
Neytiri’s eyes are shining with laughter now. “He does not.”
Neteyam mutters, “I do not.”
But his gaze is still fixed on your daughter.
Still painfully, hopelessly loving.
You follow his eyes and smile. “She’s growing up.”
He does not answer right away.
There is something in his voice then,something tender and bruised. Not anger. Not fear, exactly. Just the ache of realizing your children are becoming their own people with their own hearts and their own stories.
It hits him all at once, and you can see it.
You take his hand gently. “He is just a boy.”
Neteyam gives you a look so darkly skeptical that you almost laugh again. “That is never ‘just.’”
He looks back at his daughter, then at the boy, then sighs through his nose.
You squeeze his hand. “I know.”
Jake grins at the whole exchange. “You know what the funny part is?”
Neteyam does not look at him. “I am sure you are about to tell me.”
Jake does anyway. “You were way worse.”
Neteyam finally looks at him. “I was not.”
Jake points at the memory like it is carved into the sky. “You asked her mother if you could walk her home because you were ‘concerned about the dark’ and then you stood on the wrong side of the path because you were too nervous to be next to her.”
You bury your face in one hand, laughing all over again.
Neytiri adds with deadly calm, “He also brought the wrong berries because he thought the sweet ones looked too forward.”
Neteyam makes a sound of defeat so deep it seems to come from his soul.
The boy across the clearing is still speaking with your daughter, and at last she looks genuinely happy. Nervous, perhaps. Curious. But happy.
And despite his panic, despite his humiliation, despite Jake and Neytiri being absolutely unbearable, his expression softens.
He exhales once, long and slow.
Then he says, almost to himself, “If he hurts her,”
“Then we will handle it,” you cut in gently.
You touch his face. “Together.”
That gets him to relax the slightest bit.
The two of you stand there hand in hand while your daughter and the boy talk under the warm light of evening. Jake and Neytiri continue making it worse in the background, because apparently their life’s work is humiliating their eldest son.
But the thing Neteyam cannot say out loud,the thing that sits right behind the short-circuiting and the protectiveness and the embarrassment,is that he understands now why his father looked the way he did.
Because loving a child means loving the person they are becoming.
And that means someday standing back, even while your heart does a full collapse in your chest.
You both look back at your daughter.
Then, in the gentlest voice, he says, “I will not survive this.”
You smile and lean into him. “You will.”
Jake laughs from somewhere nearby. “No, he won’t.”
Neytiri murmurs, pleased, “He will survive.”
Neteyam gives them both a look of deep suffering.
But then your daughter laughs again, the boy smiles back, and Neteyam realizes he is already smiling too.
Not because this is easy.
But because this is love, all over again.
And apparently, once was not nearly enough to prepare him for it.
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