Chapter Text
They all knew the stories. The knight with the sword that sealed the darkness. The princess with the golden light of Hylia. And ripping them asunder, every time, the monstrous, desiccated hands of the calamity. Every knight lost every princess. Every princess lost every knight. And every calamity found itself defeated.
But once, fate slipped; once, just once, the princess’s hand reached out, but to the monster, not the knight. She held the monster’s hand and then gathered up the knight’s hand; the trinity completed. They all were pillars of light, searing a new and more divergent path, three paths that left their predetermined route and instead, converged. The world around them shifted under the weight of their collective changed destinies.
(As in, they fucked. To be fair to them: it worked. It helped that Zelda and Link both found the cursed Gerudo king handsome in a tall, broad, red-haired way when he arrived in court begging for assistance with the beast inside of him. Even as they had looked at him and known who, what he was—even as they had seen the calamity coursing through his veins, just begging to be freed—they had, despite knowing the danger, wanted him. It was Zelda—freshly coronated and with cold webbing over her skin still from her latest visit to the Springs of Power, with Hylia thrumming through her veins—who dared to realize, dared to dream, that one could have both.
Afterwards, calamity satiated, they lay there cooling and whispering to each other and dared to dream even further: of a future.)
Three years later.
Link showed up to Ganon’s last class just as the students were stirring restlessly. Ganon didn’t have a timepiece in the classroom for that very reason—disruptive students made for a disrupted education—but the students had some innate sense for when a lesson was running too long and dinner was nigh. As such, many feet were shuffling and eyes darting to the door and back to their textbooks when Ganon looked up and saw Link at the door.
“Hmm,” he said, cutting himself off mid-sentence. The students looked up at him, bleary-eyed, from the thick tomes they were using to follow along with him as he lectured on the importance of the quality of spell components. Some intrepid students—from the families of high-ranking scholars in the queen’s board of advisors, surely—looked to the doorway and grinned openly when they saw it was Link. “I suppose we’ll end our lesson for the day. Please work your way up to cantrip number fourteen by our next lesson and come prepared to execute a cantrip of my choice, which I will decide day of. Class dismissed.”
They filed out quickly, these lesser sons of nobles and advisors and any of the other hundreds of staff members it took to keep Hyrule Castle in its bustling state. Only the unimportant kids, though. The heirs, as well as any other children of particular importance, or just children with overprotective parents, never attended his class. Zelda’s clear regard for Ganon was a great force in shaping the way the castle looked at him, but more powerful was a parent’s love for a child. While Ganon was known as a good teacher—an excellent teacher—he would always first and foremost be known as dangerous.
Link came up to him as the classroom thinned out. To the unpracticed onlooker, his face looked blank, but Ganon could write a whole dissertation on the minute emotions on Link’s face; he was an expert in seeing Link, really seeing him. The thin sheen of drying sweat on Link’s face, the imperceptible flush on Link’s face, the way he wore his leather armor instead of his polished steel, all meant that Link had just come back from training practice. Furthermore, from the relaxed slant of Link’s eyebrows, the neutral pose of his ears, Ganon could see that Link was just coming by because he wanted to, and not because he had to. A social call, not a occupational one.
Link looked up at him, solemn-faced, and then reached up to tug at the collar of Ganon’s robe, until Ganon was leaning forward obligingly. And Link kissed him, a firm and gentle kiss, and one thoroughly unafraid of the unabashed staring of the students yet to file out of the class.
Link could be shameless that way, and just the thought of it sent a wicked heat running through Ganon.
Wicked heat? He forced himself to stop thinking about the softness of Link’s mouth and instead felt a mild panic rising; he reached for that feeling once more and then let out a breath when he realized it was not the licking, searing flame of calamity, but instead the more normal heat of arousal.
All was well, then. Except for the fact that he had entirely stopped kissing back Link and instead was standing there, a statue.
Link leaned back and signed, Okay?
“I’m okay. I thought I had a calamity scare, there.”
Need Zelda?
“No, I don’t think so.” At Link’s searching look, he smiled. “You know I wouldn’t lie about that.”
Link did know. The small crinkle in his eyebrows smoothed out. Ganon looked over Link’s shoulder, at the remaining two students who were obviously gawping from the doorframe. At his attention, they jumped in place and exited.
Link leaned against the table as Ganon cleared it. He put sheafs of homework into his satchel, which would be his work to grade that night. A student gave him an orange earlier that day and it sat there still on his desk, untouched. Every time Ganon looked at that orange, it pleased him because he recalled the way his student had so shyly offered it to him, an unexpected morning kindness, and so he had refrained from eating it so he could feel that small joy every time he glanced at it for the rest of the day. Now, he offered it to Link, who accepted. The other man peeled it open and gave him the first segment.
It was bright and tart in his mouth, well worth the wait. He waved off Link’s offer for any remainder of the fruit and watched as it disappeared into Link’s cavernous gullet. He was always hungry after his training.
“I thought I wouldn’t see you until dinner.”
About that. Zelda’s not coming to dinner.
“Oh? Everything okay?”
Last minute meeting with Purah. She asked me to say she’s sorry.
He wished he could say that he was surprised, but Zelda cancelled more often than not these days. It mostly filled him with concern: concern that she was overworking herself; concern if she was making time for the things she loved; and the small, disquieting concern that was ever-present in his mind of if he was still included in the category of things she loved.
It was funny—one would look at the emotive, capricious Zelda and the stone-faced Link and think her more easy to read than him. But Link was, once you figured everything out, an open book. It was Zelda who was a master at hiding her true emotions behind a playful smile or an impetuous flick of golden hair. Even after three years, Ganon still struggled to fully read her.
But Link did not seem concerned, and so Ganon did not press further. Instead, he smiled at the knight. “Is that what the kiss was for? Her apology?”
No. She can make her own apologies. The kiss was because I like your spectacles.
Ganon reached up to touch his own face. He’d forgotten he was wearing the glasses. They were made by Robbie, when Ganon complained of the eyestrain of grading papers so often, of the fuzziness he was saw when he tried to look far into the distance despite his corrective lenses. He’d worn spectacles for years, whenever he absolutely had to, but owned only the clunky thick ones fashioned in Gerudo by impatient artisans. These ones were Robbie’s latest experiment: half-moon ones that were far less obstructive to his view and had a much more accurate lens. He’d gotten them yesterday and looked at himself in the mirror, at his bulky, broad body, incongruous with the delicacy of the frames, and thought it serviceable.
Now, however, he had a greater appreciation for Robbie’s design. He looked back at Link. The flush on the knight’s face was definitely not from exercise, now. He took a quick catalogue: brightness, in Link’s eyes. Anticipation. The tiny, minute flex of his fingers, curling and uncurling. Desirous.
Ganon held out a hand, casting a quick spell. The door to the office room shut and locked.
He took off the glasses and polished them. When he put them back on, Link’s eyes were darting from his hands to his face. He was biting his lip.
“A whole evening without Zelda,” Ganon said, with a mock-sad sigh that had some real undercurrents of disappointment. He leaned forward and kissed Link, a long sweeping series of kisses that started at the lips and ended with him biting playfully at the knight’s neck, as Link breathed quickly and shallowly and flushed even deeper. He ran his hands down Link’s sides, boosted him up onto the newly-cleared desk. “Well, I suppose we shall have to make do.”
Link rolled his eyes, though he remained a hot red. Come here, his eyes said, even as he reached with grabby hands, and Ganon did.
After they’d both satisfied themselves—which meant Ganon shoving two thick, spit-slicked fingers up Link, who squirmed and let out desperate huffs for air as he knocked all the decoration off of the desk with his flailing hands; meant Ganon growling and curling his fingers and twisting them in and out until Link came, silently and with his entire face open; meant Link, sliding bonelessly to his knees in front of Ganon and pulling up the heavy velvet robes until he had access to Ganon’s cock, curving proudly upwards; meant Ganon, lacing his fingers through soft blonde hair and then fucking forward mercilessly, while Link choked and made soft, little tremulous sounds between the horrible wet sounds of cock sliding in and out of his mouth but keeping his tongue slack and his face relaxed until Ganon moaned, hoarsely, almost bent double over Link’s vicious, gorgeous mouth, and withdrew soft and oversensitive—after all of that, Ganon pulled the other man up, kissed the damp hairs at Link’s temple and said thoughtfully, “I need to put a bottle of oil in here or something.”
He felt, more than saw, Link nod, the movement quick enough to betray an eagerness, and he suppressed a smile into Link’s neck. A proper fucking on the desk, next time then.
So, after all that, they cleaned themselves up, cleaned the desk back up, and left the classroom. Ganon locked it up and they headed to the blacksmith, where Link had left a dinged-up breastplate to be mended. The blacksmith was a tough, no-nonsense sort of man, who looked annoyed at the close way Link inspected the mended breastplate. Ganon, however, was busy looking at the tiny, cute furrow between Link’s brows as he concentrated on examining the armor.
The breastplate had gotten damaged during his last expedition. The kingdom was largely a quiet, peaceful one, but even so, there was the occasional calamitous monster. A bokoblin camp, or a slither of lizalfo, a Yiga Clan member, or even once, memorably, a Hinox. All walking—or in the Hinox’s case, lumbering—to the castle and causing mass destruction in their wakes. Undoubtedly because of the calamity tightly knotted in Ganon’s chest, which was kept at bay only through Zelda’s power, but still managed to provide a dark siren call to all of the beasts that roamed Hyrule.
Link, as the knight-in-commander, was often called away to these skirmishes. He never talked about them much, offering an eloquent shrug whenever either Zelda or Ganon asked him how they went. But lately, Ganon had been noticing an uptick in the frequency of such events. Link came back more tired, grimier, his armor carrying more rents. They still had yet to lose a single knight but it came at the expense, it seemed, of Link’s own health. And who knew how long his luck would last?
His hands were fisted tightly in his robes, Ganon realized. He forced himself to relax, finger by finger.
After Link deemed his armor in a satisfactory state, they went to the hospital wing, a sweeping high-ceilinged sanatorium frescoed with paintings of the goddess Hylia and her myriad blessed around her, the pale blue creatures almost seeming to glow down on them. As the original architect of the castle had said, if people were to convalesce, let them find comfort in their surroundings at least. Ganon’s hulking mass was a common sight there and one of the nurses, one of the friendlier ones, waved at him.
Link stood there, a quiet shadow in the background, as Ganon went through his nightly work. Zelda kept telling Ganon that there was no need for him to work himself so hard, that he had nothing to prove. But how could she say that, when, after three years of service, he was still only allowed to tend the comatose or otherwise out-of-their-mind patients, who would not be terrified by the sight of him?
No, he had everything to prove.
Ganon had been a ruler once, the once-in-a-hundred-year male ruler of the Gerudo, the destined male whose birthright was to lead. From the cutting of his umbilical cord and severing his connection to some Gerudo warrior that he’d never met, he had been whisked away to the palace and coronated at age eighteen. There, he had had an atrium twice the size of this sanatorium, and it had been the smaller of his atriums, though the more beautiful one. He had petitioners, who lined up almost halfway through the city, looping around the fountains and through the markets, who brought their sick and ill to him and watched as he brushed over their foreheads with a gentle thumb. The indisposed were at ease, the sick healed, and Gerudo sighed a little easier, knowing that their destined king had arrived.
He’d thrown parties, in his youth, drunk on power in the way that one crowned at eighteen and told his whole life that he was a destined king would be. In his twenties, he met the King of Hyrule, Rhoam, who’d given him a long look, his rheumy blue gaze clearly speaking of his disapproval of Ganon’s young wastrel ways. (At that time, Zelda had been too young to travel so far to Gerudo, but he known of her because of his right hand, Urbosa, who travelled often to Hyrule and was not-so-secretly the queen’s lover and the princess’s godmother. This undoubtedly helped color King Rhoam’s distaste for Gerudo.) The Rito tolerated him, the Goron loved him, and the Zora people watched him with ancient, considering eyes. But all brought their ill and sick to him and his bless’d hand.
“You are,” he was told by soothsayers, “Gerudo’s greatest hope.”
He believed it.
And over the next eight years, he fucked, indiscriminately. In between ceremonies, petitioners, advisors, governmental papers, disputes, all of those minutiae that rulers have to pass a practiced eye over, he was found rolling in the sheets.
There was a feral sort of joy, he thought, to his lovemaking during that time, with little care for his partner, but with the hungry intent of exploration. He did not have to worry about his partners, because he knew they could only ever adore him. And now, when thinking back to it, with a slump of shame to his shoulders, none of them would’ve been truly able to say no, would they have been? Not one of them, he thought bitterly, would have denied, or thought they were allowed to deny, the great honor of bedding the Desert King. They had all seemed willing, but he knew better now.
All of that changed once the calamity blossomed in his chest, like a gut punch of magma. Every time he tried to reach for his healing, corruption spread instead. At first, he thought it error, until it became all that was left of his magic, until it threatened to eclipse him, and his petitioners—a practice he had begrudged more the older he got—dwindled until he was left in an empty atrium, staring with a horrified wonder at the hands he had taken for granted.
Urbosa gripped his shoulder, startling him from his reverie. “My king,” she said.
She had been the first person to touch him in a long time and he stared at her hand for a long moment before flicking his gaze up to her eyes. Her steady, competent eyes. “You must see Queen Zelda,” she said. “I think—I hope—that she can help.”
He’d not attended the young queen’s coronation earlier that year, fearful of the ink black and violent magenta corruption that spread from his fingers and clouded his bathwater, spoiled his silk sheets, even shone out from behind his eyes when he looked in the mirror sometime. He left Urbosa in charge and left with a small retinue of four trusted servants. It was a five-day journey. The first night, one servant choked on water and convulsed to death, vomiting black and searing fuchsin bile. The second night, one tried to strangle another, his pupils glowing purple against a black sclera. The third night, the other two simply disappeared, and he continued the rest of the journey alone. He could not resent them their abandonment. He wrapped his hands in bandages, as if that would contain the sickness, and staggered on.
And all he remembered was that tug in his chest that beckoned him towards Hyrule Castle. He stepped through the castle, nearly insensate, and followed that feeling until it led him to a young man, gesturing at a group of guards.
He did not know what it was that had led him to this man. All he knew was that he collapsed to his knees, looking up at a startled face and choking out the words,“Please…”
Those eyes, he thought, lost in those blue eyes. In that moment, he knew that they recognized each other—not because they had ever met (at least, not in this lifetime), but a deeper sort of knowing, one that went all the way down to his bones. Ganon slumped there and wondered if he had found his savior, or perhaps his killer. He did not know which one he had begged for. Perhaps both. The uncertainty wavered in the air.
Then the young man grabbed his hand and tugged him along, through high arching castle doors, across stone paths and passing paintings of ancestors in gilt frames, each face more severe than the last, until at last they were in the great hall and the queen was turning and saying, in a tone of perfect irritation, “This better be important, Link.”
Then, as they say, the rest was history. They fell together, they fucked, they fought the darkness within Ganon. They won.
Ever since Zelda—ever since Zelda and Link—his magic had continued to run pure and clean. He could cure once more, with his blessed hands. But he was not to be trusted anymore.
It had been years since he saw his beloved Gerudo, though he heard Urbosa—under the title of Steward of Gerudo—was running the kingdom with great competence. Unsurprisingly so. The people, he heard in the reports that Zelda slipped to him, with a peculiar twist of guilt and sympathy on her face, were thriving.
And he was happy that they could be happy in the arid desert he dreamed of at night—he was grateful that they were happy, in that far off place. All while their former king puttered around a castle, in simple monastic robes that were a far cry from his former opulent closet, teaching the children and healing those that weren’t too afraid to be healed by him.
He straightened up from checking on one of his patients and caught sight of Link, standing at parade rest next to the doorway’s candle sconce. The dear, familiar face with that faraway, yet focused stare grounded him. He forgot, sometimes, that he had only technically known Link for three years. Three years always felt like too long and too short, all at once.
It was a greater percentage of their life than it was his, also, which might account for the strange time dilation: he had occupied more of their lives than they had his, and that knowledge weighed on him. They had just hosted a small festive for Link’s twenty-and-three celebration. Sometimes he felt ancient next to Zelda and Link, felt acutely the years stretching between them. He felt like a broken invalid, sometimes, old and undeserving of these two beautiful creatures who were choosing to waste the prime of their lives on him.
He voiced something similar to Zelda, once, and she had grasped him firmly, stroked and pulled until he was groaning and loose with pleasure under her hands, muffling his moans into her clavicle, pressing his fingers into the dips of her waist in an attempt not to lose himself too quickly, and she said, voice low in his ear, “How could you even dare to say you’re not beautiful too? I wish you could see yourself like this,” with her words colored with sort of open-voweled awe. Link had smiled in agreement, petted his fingers across the blunt nub of Ganon’s nipple, and bit down on Ganon’s hip, sharp and playful.
Yes, Ganon thought, washing his hands in a nearby basin and returning to Link’s side. Yes, he had lost much: his gift, his purpose, his home. But he had gained so much—namely, the two of them. He could not imagine a life without them, or, if he did, such imaginings did not seem like a life at all.
Zelda was still entangled in her meeting with Purah by the time Ganon was ready for bed. The two of them were in the main living chamber of the queen’s residences, a familiar enough occurrence that the guards hadn’t even blinked before letting him and Link in. Long ago, he had claimed the small table at the edge of a chintz sofa as his own, and now placed the papers on it that he needed to review before the night was out. But before then, he and Link had a lovely quiet dinner, a simple dish of pork and potatoes, their ankles knocking into each other under the table. Afterwards, he adjusted the glasses on his face and dipped his quill in ink.
Night had fallen by the time he was done grading all the papers and reviewed his correspondance. Link, sitting cross-legged by the fire, was reading one of the cookbooks borrowed from the library. From the crumbly look of the edges of the pages, it was an old recipe book indeed.
Link looked up, alert as always, when Ganon stood to stretch. He watched as Ganon twisted his back, cracking it in a series of satisfying pops, and tilted his face up to receive the kiss that Ganon came over to give him. Ganon let his fingers linger on his cheek and said, “I think I shall retire, love, if you’ll join me?”
Link laced his fingers with Ganon’s and let him pull him up. They walked to the door adjoining Zelda’s bedchamber with her living quarters and opened it to reveal the massive bed dominating the round room. It was the kind of bed that had to be specially commissioned, for what else could fit one large Gerudo man and two Hylians?
Zelda had the bed constructed when it became apparent that nobody wished to return to their respective rooms at night, and she grew tired of someone being accidentally kicked off of the bed at night. (Ganon had rooms of his own, but they were empty and probably dusty to boot. All of his meager belongings, artifacts from a past life, were hidden in Zelda’s massive closet. Link, on the other hand, was meticulous about maintaining his own space away from Zelda, and had only a small shelf of essentials in Zelda’s quarters, though rare was the night he spent in his own bed.) This new bed was ample enough that all of them could sleep comfortably without touching, but often they woke up anyway in a pile of limbs and tangled hair.
In this configuration, Ganon slept in the middle, usually, because Link didn’t like to be in the middle because he was easily jolted awake, and Zelda didn’t like to be in the middle because she was often up late and hated to clamber over them in order to sandwich herself. So it only made sense for Ganon, a sound sleeper who operated off a rigid schedule and was early to bed, early to rise, to regularly sleep in the middle, where he would reliably stay asleep all night. (Though he had, in the past, woken to Zelda’s foot shooting straight into his gut during a particularly vivid dream of hers.)
However, he saw that Zelda always looked better rested after nights when they put her in the center. So sometimes, he would wake up when she finally dragged herself back from her laboratory. She tried to be quiet, but she always woke up Link, the lightest sleeper of them all, and the resulting movement would sometimes wake up Ganon.
And then, despite Zelda’s murmuring that it was unnecessary, that it was ridiculous, he would move her to the center and they would all fall asleep like that, with Zelda tucked between them.
Sometimes he thought Link stirred awake with deliberately exaggerated movements, just so Ganon would move Zelda to the center. It was a sacrifice on the knight’s part, because Zelda was much more fidgety than Ganon, and more than once, he saw Link yawn jaw-breakingly after a particularly restless night with Zelda in the middle. These self-sacrificial young folk. It was a delicate balance, appeasing them both.
He started to cross to the dressing room, where his nightclothes were, intent on readying himself for bed, but was stopped in his path by Link placing a hand on his chest. Link reached for his hand and deposited something in his palm.
Ganon uncurled his fingers. There was the slim glass vial filled with the thick oil they used as lubricant.
“Oh my sweet,” he said, reaching out to thumb over Link’s bottom lip. Link’s mouth dropped open, very slightly. “Was this afternoon not enough for you?”
Link’s ears flicked. No, it wasn’t. It was never enough, with him; Ganon didn’t even know why he asked.
His hand lowered to wrap around Link’s jaw, stroked down his neck to follow the flush on Link’s face. Link was practically trembling. “Come to bed, then. Let’s see if we can fix that.”
They retired to the bed. Link was impatient as he plucked at Ganon’s clothes, fluttered kisses over the exposed brown skin as he undressed the other man. Ganon watched, feeling bemused and very much desired, his cock already swelling by the time Link freed it from his smallclothes.
Link moved to take it in his mouth and Ganon enjoyed the sensation for a moment before he hauled the younger man up and off. “No, my love. Your turn.”
He undressed Link slowly, lovingly, enjoying the restless squirming as he kissed over the old scar on Link’s thigh from a bad horse fall when he was a teenager, licked over the pink tip of the other man’s cock. He always marveled at Link’s insatiability, especially the knight’s penchant to being fucked. Ganon had experienced both sides of penetration, had enjoyed both to varying degrees, but the way Link’s ears flattened in ecstasy from as little as a slick finger, the way he whined and fluttered around Ganon, made Ganon almost a little envious. Not enough to stop fucking the younger man, though.
He’d like to tease Link a little more, perhaps bring him to an orgasm or two on his tongue, but he admitted that perhaps he too was a little riled up, and that they ought to get down to the business of it. Link was still slightly loose from this afternoon, but he stretched him anyway, admiring the tight pink skin straining around three fingers, around the tip of a pinky as he wriggled in a fourth.
Link was moaning by then, the soft sound filling the room. It was a hoarse and lovely sound. Ganon never knew why the knight didn’t speak, and never felt the urge to ask, but his silence made these sounds all the sweeter, for how real they sounded.
“Are you ready for me, love?” he asked, rubbing the tip of his cock over Link’s hole, biting back a sound at the sensation of Link’s rim flexing around his head. He was on top of Link, his front draping over Link’s back, Link’s mouth full of pillow. They always left Link’s hands free, nobody willing to take away Link’s primary mode of communication, though Ganon was certain that if the knight wished to escape anything, he could do so in a heartbeat.
Link gasped and tried to fuck himself back. His stocky body was all muscle and he succeeded in getting an inch of cock before Ganon’s reflexes caught up and he drew back out. The head traced slick patterns on the inside of Link’s thighs.
“Now, now,” he chided, rubbing the head of his cock against Link’s taint, knowing how sensitive it was. “You have to be patient.”
Link made a broken, desperate sound. He could only see one of Link’s eyes, but it was teary, Pleading. Ganon opened his mouth, intending to say something consoling, maybe a little teasing, but then the door to the chamber opened.
“Started without me?“
Zelda entered the room, fully clad in her royal regalia, a vision in navy, gold, and white. Her blue sleeves rippled almost to the floor, the embroidery on them catching the light, the hard ribbing on her torso bringing to mind, uncannily, the armor that Link had spent so long in the afternoon inspecting. Her hair was bound up and tucked underneath her crown, the gold-and-ruby winged monstrosity that her father had worn. She was so beautiful that, even though the sight of her face was more familiar to Ganon than his own at this point, she still took away his breath a little bit, like how the sun surprises one after a long stretch of cloudiness. She did not seem surprised to find them fucking, merely amused.
Link took advantage of Ganon’s momentary distraction to squirm backwards an inch onto Ganon’s cock, thus reclaiming Ganon’s attention. Ganon groaned, and in punishment, gave him the whole thing in one swift go.
Link wailed from the sensation, a muffled sound pressed into the pillow underneath him, clenching so tightly around Ganon that Ganon had to grit his teeth and drive his fingers into Link’s hips.
“Hello my love,” said Ganon, rocking into Link with the indulgent slow strokes that he knew absolutely drove the other man insane. From the moaning coming from underneath him, it appeared to be working. “We missed you at dinner.”
“Clearly.” Zelda’s eyes were half-lidded with humor as she reached to her cloak and unclasped it. The expensive silk piled at her feet. She took the crown off of her head and placed it gently on the mannequin head near the door, then started taking the pins out of her hair. “I’m sorry to have missed it, but Purah was having a crisis over one of her projects. You know how she is.”
Ganon pulled Link open, slightly, so that he could better admire the way his hole stretched around the thickness of his cock. He never got tired of the sight. “How was your day?”
“The same as always.” She took the last pin out of her hair, the golden length tumbling down to become one long, shining braid that brushed her hips. “Getting better now, though.”
Zelda took two quick steps to stand next to the bed, within reach. Ganon paused in his thrusting to kiss her; she tasted of coffee and he drew away frowning. “It’s late at night.”
“Yes it is,” she said, pretending to misunderstand him. She leaned over to where Link was burying his face in the pillow and said, “Hiding your face, Link? That’s hardly a show, isn’t it?”
She flicked a glance over at Ganon, a teasing flash of teal, and Ganon rolled over so he was no longer on top but instead Link was, splayed on Ganon’s torso, his pink face flushing harder at the exposure, his sounds loud in the confined space of the bedchamber. He continued thrusting up into Link, one hand sliding down to grab the inside of Link’s thigh and tug him open, showing him off to Zelda. So she could better see Link’s cock, fully erect, bouncing with every thrust and shiny-wet at the tip. “Better?”
“Much.”
Link was gasping out little hoarse sounds, his eyes hazy and far away, but he managed to refocus enough to sign at Zelda. Part of it was blocked by his head, but Ganon caught sight of Join and Please.
“Not for me tonight, I think,” said Zelda with a regretful, tired smile, but she sat down on the edge of the bed and slid her fingers through Link’s sweaty hair fondly. “I’m a bit tuckered out. My head was spinning for the last fifteen minutes of Purah’s speech; I’m almost afraid I offended her with my inattention, but after this afternoon’s ministry convergence, my concentration lapsed.”
“Long day with the ministers?”
“The longest. There’s this bridge, see…”
They continued chatting about their day, as if Link wasn’t being fucked in between them, Ganon pausing in between sentences to kiss Link’s neck or loosely jerk him off, Zelda’s fingers lightly scratching through Link’s hair. Perhaps in the beginning of their relationship, Ganon would worry about not paying enough attention to Link, but he had quickly found that Link enjoyed this, enjoyed being ignored a little bit, enjoyed being used. Link would never say it out loud or ask for it, but he would orgasm quickly if Ganon whispered in his ear about how he wanted to seat Link on his cock in the throne room and fuck him for all the passerby. The first time they discovered this, Ganon nearly dragged him out to the throne room to see how many orgasms they could wring out of his pretty cock, before remembering it was not his throne room.
This particular situation seemed to be really working wonders on Link. As Zelda relayed a funny story about a petitioner who tried to give her a chicken and Ganon laughed, he could feel Link tightening up around him, the precursor to orgasm. Without missing a beat, he reached down to rub over Link’s cock, stroke up from the base to press on the sensitive spot under the head, thumb over the very tip.
Link’s moans stuttered and he jerked between Ganon’s hand and back onto his cock, his head tipped back on Ganon’s shoulder and his feet braced against the mattress. He came like that, spilling over Ganon’s hands, the tiny sounds he made stuttering to a halt. Ganon hooked his chin over Link’s shoulder, tightened his grip on Link’s cock, and watched as the sensation made Link choke.
Zelda watched them, her eyes dark. She stroked over Link’s brow as he breathed in heavily, twitching from the feeling of being fucked post-orgasm. “Not enough?” she whispered to him.
Ganon watched in astonishment as Link’s lovely blue eyes cracked open and he shook his head. No, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough for him. Ganon gritted his teeth, tried to distract himself, and continued shallowly pumping into Link.
Zelda was attending fully to Link now as he spasmed and moaned from oversensitivity. “Breathe,” she whispered, kissing his lips, his cheeks. “You wanted this, so we’re going to get you there. That’s it.” Ganon reached around, groped at Link’s nipple, scratched through the come-wet hair at the base of his cock, stroked at the insides of his thighs.
Link was trembling as Ganon gently thrust in and out, looking like he would be in pain were it not for the raw sounds that were being scraped out of him. He clenched at Ganon, so tightly that there would be bruises, and spread his legs wide in a silent beg; Ganon wrapped his arms around Link entirely, trapping him on his cock, and began to bounce Link.
Link made a tight, high noise at the feeling and gripped at Ganon’s arm around his waist. His soft cock flopped against his thigh, but it no longer looked quite as soft as before—as Ganon watched, it twitched and began to slowly, slowly rise.
He felt so good around Ganon, like this. All fucked out and yet still so tight, his body trembling from oversensitivity, looking like he lived to take Ganon’s cock—and at that thought, Ganon bit down on Link’s shoulder savagely, hips stuttering in rhythm as he breathed and tried not to come at the sight of Link.
Not yet, he told himself.
“That’s it,” said Zelda encouragingly and Link grabbed at her hand, holding it tightly. His mouth opened in a silent cry as Ganon drove into him over and over again, until he could hear those lovely lovely sounds fading away as pleasure tightened in Link.
Zelda stroked a thumb over Link’s knuckles. Ganon reached down, wrapped a loose grip around Link, and Link panted, tightening up at the touch, fucking up into Ganon’s grip and back onto his cock, until suddenly Link was a vice around him and coming again, looking like it destroyed him, almost twisting out of Ganon and Zelda’s combined grasp. His whole body went taut as he came, and then, like a puppet’s strings cut, he collapsed, moaning and teary-eyed as Ganon groaned and gave three, four cruel thrusts before burying himself as deep as possible.
He came so hard that his hearing went fuzzy for a little bit, gasping and clutching Link’s limp body to himself as he filled him up. And then he slowly fucked in and out a little more, just to hear that wet, nasty sound of come slipping out around his cock and the whimpering sounds Link made of oversensitivity, until Link gasped and signed out, Too much. He kissed Link’s forehead and gently slipped out, cock lying quiescent against Link’s thigh.
He and Link lay there, spent, Link’s tight grip on Zelda’s hand gradually loosening as he began to doze off. Ganon lifted one arm to wrap around Link, who made a pleased sound and snuggled closer into Ganon’s chest, his eyes already closed. After a moment, Zelda said, “I’ll ask them to send someone to change the sheets. Let us go to the bath house to clean up before bed.”
Ganon caught her hand as she raised to go to the door, Link still carefully cradled to his chest. “Thank you, my love.”
She raised his hand to hers and kissed it. And then, as if she had not just casually sent affection blossoming all the way up and down Ganon’s spine, she let go of him and headed for the door.
Zelda accompanied them to the queen’s bath room, a magnificent sunken pool in the center of a room, whose water was drawn up from the hot springs naturally found underneath the castle. It was large enough for all three of them to submerge themselves in without any painful knocking of knees in other, more sensitive places. The sight of her undressing to enter the water, the rosy tint of her nipples, the perfect smoothness of her skin, would have ignited something ravenous in Ganon’s belly if it weren’t for how wrung out he felt after that last orgasm. Three times in one day was too much for him. The only thing that made him feel better about his age was glancing over at Link, who was practically asleep on his feet, and feeling absurdly proud that he had helped do that.
They had to keep an eye on Link, who started dozing off in the hot water as Zelda scrubbed his hair. Ganon busied himself with combing through Zelda’s hair, tenderly, starting from the bottom and moving upwards. When he reached the top of the strands, he massaged her scalp, relieving the tension that dozens of pins had caused her over the day. She sighed in pleasure and he dropped a quick kiss on her bare, wet shoulder.
“Will you come to bed after this?” he murmured.
From the stiffening in her shoulders, he knew the answer. She said, “I have some work to do, first. But I’ll join you later.”
“You need more rest.”
“What I need,” she said regally, ruefully, “is more hours in the day.”
He wanted to argue, to say, When I was a ruler, I was able to sleep at regular intervals. But Zelda was a better leader than him. That, he knew for certain. What he had taken for granted, she saw as a promise to her people. The infrastructure she was creating would provide security and safety for decades. And yet, he could know for certain that she was creating great things while also acknowledging that she was likely working herself to the grave.
They tucked Link into bed, where he started snoring immediately, and Ganon slid in after him. He twitched the blankets next to him aside, a hopeful invitation that he knew in his gut that she wouldn’t take. Zelda’s eyes were full of nothing but fondness as she shook her head, disappearing instead into the side antechamber that functioned as a little, private office.
“Good night,” she whispered.
“Good night.”
Link made an incoherent, snorting sound.
She closed the door behind her. He heard the strike of a match and the faint light of a lantern shone out from underneath the door, part of it blocked by her silhouette. He watched that shadow move as she worked, slowly and steadily, until his eyes slid shut and he saw nothing at all.
In the morning, Ganon swam. This was a relatively new exercise for him—Gerudo Desert wasn’t known, after all, for its swimming pools. Sure, he had splashed in oases for fun, as any child in Gerudo did, but had little experience with water otherwise. When Zelda and Link had shown him the joy of swimming in large lakes, whose shimmering banks seemed an ocean away from each other, he had fallen in love.
Every morning, now, he swam laps until his breathing was a little shaky, his lungs burning, and his shoulders pleasantly warm. Part of the reason he loved it so was because it was drastically different from the exercise he did in Gerudo—running on sand to strengthen the calf muscles, throwing sandbags back and forth with other warriors, doing pushups on the boiling hot courtyard stone to toughen up his hands. He was used to an intense workout regime, but in the beginning, when he was so homesick that he couldn’t even speak to Link and Zelda about it because it felt like words could not convey the depth of his grief, the sweat he worked up in the training rooms just felt like a reminder of the companions he missed, of the golden-hot city he belonged to.
But swimming. Swimming felt cleansing and was far enough removed from Gerudo that it instead became a meditative exercise. And so, he swam. Back and forth, under the rosy streaks of dawn. Sometimes Link joined him. Sometimes, all three of them would rise early, and Ganon would go swimming while the other two went riding, their horses racing, all snorting heads and manes flying in the wind, and Ganon would look at them and think, How beautiful, with only a trace of envy (no horse could hold a man as large as he). Today, he and Link had left Zelda sleeping after her late night, and Link left to assist with another skirmish. This spotting was of a silver lizalfo, but where there was one, there was often many. Ganon had seen them off, a party of twelve of Hyrule’s finest knights.
He emerged from the water when the sky had lightened sufficiently and the burning of his lungs was starting to become too much to bear. He toweled off and redressed, pausing to frown at the way his lungs continued to burn. He pressed a hand to his sternum, but it didn’t immediately subside.
That was sign number one.
Midday and Link had not returned yet. Ganon had an eye on the window he was conveniently sitting at, the other eye on the scholar in front of him. He was regularly asked to attend scholarly meeting; as one of the only practitioners of Gerudo magic, and a male practitioner to boot, he was considered somewhat of a magical anomaly. It turned out that fear of you could, indeed, be superseded by academic interest.
Today’s scholar’s meeting was rather sparsely attended. There was apparently a conference going on in Akkala, likely spearheaded by Robbie, into the older Sheikah technology. Ganon wondered how much of Zelda’s quiet distress yesterday had been caused by her being unable to attend a conference that aligned with her interests. What rotten luck, he thought dryly, that he was a ruler-turned-scholar, and she a scholar-turned-ruler, and that their interests should be in their former role, but their duty and talent in the latter? Though, of course, Zelda was as equally talented a scholar as she was a ruler.
The last man, a specialist on waterways, concluded his presentation and Ganon stood up. He had prepared a brief overview of Gerudo’s harnessing of electricity, a process that was the result of many a late night spent agonizing over what to teach and what to keep hidden. After all, though he may have lived in the kingdom of Hyrule for years at this point, a good part of his heart was lodged squarely in Gerudo.
That was when sign number two happened. He was in the middle of drawing a complex diagram when a pain seized his chest. The piece of chalk in his hands crumbled to bits and pieces and he staggered, catching himself by the top of the chalkboard. Two of the scholars exclaimed and stood up to catch him, though, weedy things that they were, he wasn’t sure what they expected to accomplish.
“Sir Ganon?” Nobody in the castle knew how to describe him, an ex-ruler, an ex-monster, a vagabond. Sir Ganon was the closest anyone got, and even then, it just sounded wrong. “Are you… all right?”
“Perfectly well,” he said, grimacing and recovering himself. His breath felt short. “Just had a moment there. Nothing to worry about.”
After the meeting was over, he went to find one of Zelda’s handmaidens. She was in the kitchen, working out the schedule for next week’s meals, and looked up with some trepidation as he approached. None of Zelda’s handmaidens liked him very much; he was too big to be harmless, and too tired and broken to be anything but a pitiable object, and he could see the confusion of emotion in their eyes every time he approached. This one, at least, was a little more composed than the others. “Yes, Sir Ganon?”
“Where is the Queen, at this moment?”
“She is doing her annual review of bylaws, sir, with her advisors, in preparation for the meeting of towns later this year. She’s asked not to be disturbed for the next hour or so.”
In hindsight, he should’ve pressed further, should’ve emphasized the urgency of the matter. Instead, he shifted from foot to foot as he contemplated. Only a strong man would beg to walk into fire, and so he weakly said, “I’ll find her after the meeting, then,” and walked away.
An hour. An hour should be fine.
Forty-five minutes later, Ganon fell to the floor. He convulsed, once, twice, and then had the presence of mind to reach to his right hand, where he wore the same ring that Link and Zelda wore, a delicate silver thing inset with a blue stone, and twisted around the stone once, twice, thrice.
With immense difficulty, he raised it to his lips.
“East…wing…” he croaked out.
It took ten minutes. He focused on breathing narrowly, the agony of suppressing the calamity a battle that resonated from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. In such an experience, he should’ve lost track of time, but instead became painfully aware of how many seconds passed between when he sent the message and when Zelda arrived. Ten minutes. Ten minutes spent fighting, breathing, thinking of all the reasons not to succumb, most of which revolved around a knight and a queen. Ten minutes using his finely-sharpened willpower, honed through years’ worth of constant battle with this enmity, to fight, to say, I will not lose myself, or them, to you, until he heard the patter of running footsteps.
She dropped to next to him, uncaring of her gorgeous white skirts pillowed over the grimy floor. She held her hand and said, in a choked voice, “Ganon, I’m here. I’m here.”
Her words were innocuous enough, but all Ganon heard was, Brace yourself.
Hylia’s golden, unforgiving light shone through Zelda. Her skin and hair turned nearly the same color, illuminated as they were by the goddess within her. The light leached from her and shot through Ganon and he felt it: blinding agony, white-hot pain, from his lover’s touch.
It always felt like this, whenever Zelda had to scorch out the calamity from Ganon. For that’s how it always felt, like she was burning the lines of black and purple out of his veins. He was screaming, he knew, could feel the rawness of his vocal cords. It did not feel cleansing, like water, like coolness. It felt only like torture.
But when it was done, the calamity was gone. Ganon let his head back down to the ground and breathed in air into what felt like seared lungs, and wondered how many more of these cleansings he had left in him, for every time, it seemed, it got harder.
“-anon? Ganon? Please, please—respond!”
Zelda’s face swam into vision, and then sharpened into focus. She looked extremely worried.
“I am here,” he said. It took him a moment to be able to string together words again.
“How are you feeling?”
“Calamity-free,” he said dryly. Zelda gave a humorless laugh and then he felt her fingers on his face, cool and with the intention of comfort. But his reaction to it was pure instinct; he recoiled away.
Zelda snatched back her fingers like she had been burned. She hovered, clearly at a loss for what to do.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment.
“Oh Ganon,” she said, and then, to his horror, her eyes filled with tears. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Ganon closed his eyes, as to avoid looking at her stricken expression any further, and thought about how much he loved the both of them and how grateful he was to have met them. But then he thought about how, while they met because of fate, it was that same fate that eventually brought trauma to a lover’s touch, had deprived him of his culture and home and sanity, and which continued to loom over them menacingly, to the point where he had to be in the queen’s reach at any given time. Sometimes, fate’s strings felt unerringly more like a noose.
He wished, more than anything, that he had a choice. For, if he did, he would choose, every time, to be with them.
“Tell me something,” he said. Anything, to distract from the frisson of heat still evaporating in his system. Something grounding. “Please.”
A moment, and then Zelda said, “I like your new glasses.”
The words, said with such bafflement and so reminiscent of what Link had said only a yesterday, but said now under such different circumstances, startled a hoarse laugh out of Ganon. He pressed his hands to his face, felt the delicate frames under his palms, and said, “Link thinks the same.”
“Then you know it must be true,” she said, voice prim, but with some undecipherable emotion running through it. “Are you able to move? I’d like to bring you to my chambers, but only if you are able.” And he remembered that he was laying in the hallway outside of his class. At any moment now, his students were going to come traipsing through the hallway and see their teacher blocking half the corridor and looking, for all the world, dead. That, more than anything, propelled him to his feet.
He noticed that Zelda was careful not to touch him as she accompanied him to her rooms, instead just watching him closely lest he lose his sense of balance once more. They moved slowly through the castle, attracting a lot of attention as they went, and he spared a moment to regret having passed out so far away from her bedchambers. Next time, he would save her the embarrassment and convalesce in her chambers to begin with. Zelda, much more so than Link, was so sensitive to the perception of others, and rightfully so.
When they reached her chambers, he laid down on her couch in her receiving room and let her pull a blanket over him. She sat there, quietly, on the rug next to the couch, and they looked at each other for a long moment. There were bags under her eyes. Exhaustion drew her face.
With some difficulty, he reached out. She immediately laced his fingers with her own and bent her head over them, so that he could not see her face, just the fine, regular line of her hair parting. The cold metal of her crown kissed his knuckles.
Their silence was broken by the handmaiden, hesitantly rapping on the door. “My queen. The ministry asks if they should adjourn.”
“Yes, tell them—”
“Go,” said Ganon, as gently as he could. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, my love. I thank you for your concern, but you’ve done too much already. At this point, all I can do is rest.”
The words too much already was a bad combination. Her face clouded over, and these emotions he could read all too well. Guilt. Shame. Regret. He was racking his slowened brain, trying to figure out how to assure her that there was no guilt, while also trying to explain why her touch and her presence was so difficult to bear right now, when the door to the chambers opened once more and Link came in.
He was dirtied and grimed, his hair plastered to his skull in some parts and sticking up awkwardly in other, but still was perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world to Ganon’s relieved eyes. He crossed the floor in quick steps, shedding his armor along the way, where it lay gleaming on the floor like bits of some strange metal bug carapace that clunked to the floor. Last, his gloves came off, and his naked fingers came up to touch Ganon’s face, swiveling him this way from that as Link examined his face closely.
“The lizalfos?” asked Ganon, thinking that it would be a shame if the hunting party had abandoned the silver lizalfos because of Ganon.
Dead, signed Link, the movements of his hands distracted and sloppy. Stop worrying about them.
Apparently satisfied that Ganon was fine, Link rocked back on his heels. Felt the ring go off and came as fast as I could. Was it another episode?
“Yes,” said Zelda. “A bad one.”
“Link can stay with me,” said Ganon, with some relief. “Don’t worry, Zelda. Go back to your meeting.”
Now, he’d hurt her feelings. He saw a brief injured look on her face before she smoothed it away; if he had turned to her a second later, he would’ve missed it entirely.
Zelda stood up, smoothing her skirts. “Very well then. I’ll come back for dinner?”
“It would be the highlight of my day,” said Ganon, meaning it quite sincerely.
She hovered over him for a second, ungainly in her indecision, and Ganon solved it for her—he caught her hand and kissed it, with some difficulty due to the awkward position of his arm. “You saved me once again,” he said, smiling up at her despite the effort it took. “When will I be able to return the favor?”
“I love you,” she said firmly, which was always pleasant to hear, but a complete non-sequitur. It was never a good sign when Zelda avoided the question. She also turned away as she said it, as if not wanting to see his reaction.
He said, confused but still automatic, “And I you.” He kissed her fingertips once more and then she tugged them out of his grip, turning her back and walking to the door with her shoulders hunched like a woman hiding a wound.
For the next few days, Zelda and Ganon walked on eggshells around each other. There was still dinner, still long walks, still everything they did before, but with an unspoken acknowledgement between them that they would not mention the calamity.
On one of these awkward days, Ganon reached the door right as Zelda opened it, and Link watched as she darted back to avoid touching him and Ganon tried to flatten himself against the doorframe to let her past his massive bulk. Link watched this whole exchange with a sort of bemused tilt to his head.
What’s going on between you and Zelda? asked Link. He was not the most observant of fellows, so it was really saying something for him to be adding in his two cents. Ganon remembered one moment when they had dressed Zelda in Link’s favorite gray tunic, thinking that it would please the knight, only for him to not notice until hours later.
(Granted, his reaction when he noticed was remarkable; Zelda’s knees were buckling by the time he was through with her. But his powers of observation, much less so.)
Ganon pulled off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. What was going on between him and Zelda? “I’m not quite sure myself.”
Link tilted his head. His ears flicked, once. That’s not like you.
Between the three of them, Ganon was the talker, the conflict-resolver. Zelda and Link knew each other longer, sure, but they had harsher edges, a more fraught history, a tendency to poke at each other’s sore spots, and in this—whatever the three of them had—it was often left up to Ganon to soothe ruffled feathers whenever the two of them got into their spats. He, however, could count on one hand the number of times he had a disagreement with either Link or Zelda. Prolonged squabbles were not in his nature.
Yet, he did not know quite what to say to Zelda, because his own emotions were too complicated to voice. Every time he thought of talking to her about it, all he could remember was the blinding agony of her healing him, to the point where he wondered if he was being healed at all, and that vast emptiness within him afterwards, which he had privately grieved over as Link and Zelda slumbered beside him.
In the end, they said nothing at all. In the end, she came in late at night, her feet dragging from exhaustion, and Link twitched around in the sheets to make Ganon wake up, but he had been awake anyway, waiting for her. He held out a hand to her and said, “Come to bed, love,” and Zelda melted into his arms. The past seventy-two hours seemed to not matter at all, even though he knew—and she knew, most likely—that those emotions were still there, perhaps quelled for now, but likely to rear their ugly head at the most inopportune time.
But for now, this was enough.
Ganon wasn’t sure when his birthday had become common knowledge, but he arrived at his classroom that day to find a small group of students bearing presents. Some of them were eminently practical (a new set of quills, a beautiful ink bottle in the image of Farosh) and some luxurious (a gold chain for his spectacles, a beautifully blown-glass chalice) and some kind (letters, notes, one particularly ambitious drawing).
It was a good way to start the day, and he exited from his class with a particular bounce to his step. He spent some time in the library, reading by the colored light of a stained-glass panel, and then headed to the hospital. One of the nurses had brought him a cake from the kitchens, lit a candle for him, and then clapped as he blew it out. The other staff looked uncomfortable at this display, but he chose instead to focus on her kindness, rather than their animosity.
When he emerged, Link was just outside the hospital doors, sweaty from training and face intent as he listened to one of the knights explain something. Ganon waited for the knight to finish, for Link to respond with a few quick signs, for the knight to salute and walk crisply away, before he approached and pressed a kiss against Link’s temple. “What a pleasant surprise. How are the new recruits?”
Link tilted his head back against Ganon’s chest and smiled up at Ganon, such an irrepressibly joyful expression on his face. He signed, Young. Energetic. It’s irritating.
“A hypocritical sentiment from you, don’t you think?”
Link rolled his eyes. The only person who views you as old and us as young is you.
“Isn’t that my prerogative on my own birthday?” He heard the own gloom in his voice.
Link, rather than to respond, pulled Ganon down into a kiss thoroughly unbefitting for a public hallway. When he pulled away, Ganon’s thoughts flitted briefly to whether or not there was a conveniently located broom closet nearby, before Link said, Come on, let’s clean up for dinner.
Ganon raised an eyebrow, for he couldn’t remember the last time Link cleaned up for dinner, despite Zelda’s theatrical retching. Link preferred to bathe right before bed, slip a freshly-washed body onto clean sheets, with nary a trace of food or stink on him. “Oh, is there a celebration?”
Link’s ears flattened and his face went blank and he said, No, just dinner with you, me, Zelda…
Link was an abominable liar. Ganon laughed, and then laughed more when Link scowled and turned pink. Don’t tell Zelda I spoiled the news. She’ll be furious with me.
“I’ll endeavor to act surprised.”
Link disappeared into his own rooms to grab a change of clothes, while Ganon trekked up to the queen’s quarters. He only had two sets of nice robes, really, a far cry from the rainbow rows of clothes he had when he was the Desert King. Back then, dressing was an hour-long affair, with his servants arguing over everything, from the way his sandals were laced to which delicate hoop earrings were tugged through his ears. Dressing was a statement, because what he approved to wear would shape the fashion of the city. Now, dressing was a sinecure, just a matter of pulling on whatever clean, shapeless neutral brown robe he found.
One of his fancy sets, Zelda had commissioned for him in the first year he resided at the castle. He thought she did it as a political statement for those who side-eyed him in the halls, whispered that he had enchanted the queen and her knight for malevolent purposes. She trussed him up in Hylian robes of teal watered silk, gave him bands of gold to wrap around his biceps and even dared to hang around his neck a triforce medallion. That last one caused the most irate mutterings. He wore those robes to every fancy dinner she paraded him at, her glare daring anyone to speak ill of him in front of her. Though he wore it obligingly, he never felt quite right in it.
But the other fancy set, she had given him in private, and it was made of white linin with satiny russet trimmings, and felt so familiar to the linens he watched the Gerudo seamstresses weave when he was younger that he felt choked up just seeing it. Those were the robes he reached for, unhesitatingly.
Link was waiting outside when he emerged, dressed himself in a tidy gray shirt, black pants that were tight enough that they allowed Ganon to admire his, erm, assets, and shiny black boots. He led him across the castle, where they stopped outside the Blue Room, a state room with a round oaken table polished and stained to glossy perfection, in which they had dined before on occasion. The Blue Room was so named for the color of its furnishings, the wallpaper a perfect cerulean, silent princess flowers painted at the base and embroidered on the chairs.
Link gestured for him to go in. Ganon smoothed out the front of his robes and opened the door.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
It took him a second to get a sense of who was there. In the back, there was Daruk, Goron champion and all around great guy to have at a party. He was the easiest to spot because he easily took up over half the room. Next to him were the Sheikah party—Robbie and Purah, both good friends of Ganon, who had helped him, Zelda, and Link fashion the rings they all wore. Impa was scowling behind them; she didn’t like Ganon too much, he knew, and tried not to let it dampen his spirits. There were a few nobles whose children he taught and whom he occasionally had dinner with, a minister whom he exchanged books with, and the nurse from the hospital, her hair down and curled prettily around her face. He suppressed a pang at the fact that Urbosa was not here, reminding himself that she was likely caught up in the machinations of running a kingdom.
Instead, he focused on Zelda, who was a vision, wearing a soft sky-blue dress that slipped partially off her shoulders and with her cheeks softly lit aglow by the three candles pressed into the frosted cake she was holding. Her front teeth were nervously snagging her bottom lip as her eyes flicked across his face to gauge his reaction to her surprise.
His joy was entirely unfeigned. “My friends,” he said, stepping into the room, Link filing in after him. “What a—thank you all, so much, for coming.” He stopped, trying to figure out what more to say, unable to adequately express the sensation of such fullness in his heart.
Zelda saved him. “Blow out your candles,” she said, placing down the cake on the table.
With Link on one side and Zelda on the other, he closed his eyes and made a wish. He blew out the candles.
Midway through the party, after dinner had been served and the guests were milled about talking and laughing, he was wrapped up in a conversation with Robbie when he noticed Zelda and Link conspiring in the corner of the room. Zelda was tugging at Link’s arm, clearly insisting something, and Link, the stubborn man, was digging in his heels and shaking his head. While it was too noisy to eavesdrop, Ganon caught a glance at what Link was signing, a flash of You do it, before Zelda threw her hands up with a huff and came over to Ganon and Robbie. Their conversation stuttered to a halt.
She smiled at Robbie apologetically. “Would you allow me to steal the birthday man for a moment, so I can give him his present?”
He cast a curious glance at the modest pile of presents piled on the table and she grinned. “Trust me, I couldn’t wrap it up.”
“We’ll continue our conversation later,” he told Robbie, who waved him off with a good-natured gesture. His face was red with inebriation.
He followed Zelda out of the room, down the halls, and to the royal stables, growing simultaneously more puzzled and more certain at the same time. He did not often have a chance to come here, and the horses shied away from him, snorting and roving their eyes at the sight of him. The air stunk heavily of manure, but Zelda did not flinch, leading him to the last stable.
“Here,” she said.
It was a horse. The largest horse he’d ever seen—jet black, with a fiery tufts of hair swishing at its tail and falling into its eyes. It was so large that its stable was actually three that had the walls knocked down between them to make ample space for him. Yet, despite its size and coloring, it was not fierce; it gently nuzzled at his hands when he reached out to pet its velvety nose, lipping at his fingers in search for food.
He was speechless.
“We thought—well, whenever Link rides Epona and I ride Storm, you seemed to wish you could ride one as well, and we’d heard reports of a giant horse near Gerudo and so Link went out with a party a few weeks ago and found and tamed it—“
“Oh,” said Ganon, pressing closer to the stall, pressing his cheek against the giant horse’s muzzle and breathing in its horsey scent. He lapsed into Gerudo. “Do you come from the desertlands, my brother? Do you miss it like I do?” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought the horse whickered in response. One liquid black eye blinked placidly at him, the other hidden under a fall of sanguine hair.
Zelda stood there, watching them, her hands twisting in the fabric of her dress. “Do you like it, then?”
“I do,” he said, “I do, very much, my love, thank you,” and, after darting a glance around the stable to make sure that no stray stablehand was around—Zelda hated being kissed in public, disdained public affection with the same veracity that Link craved it—he bent forward to kiss her, open and wet, reveling in the sharp inhale she made, the way her hands trembled before they slid up to his neck to tug him closer.
She tugged herself away, gasping for air. Ganon did not let her get too far, scattering kisses over her cheeks, her proud brow, the light freckle on her cheekbone, until she extracted herself fully, laughing and with her cheeks and the tips of her ears pinked, hairs falling out of her careful coiffure.
“Later,” she said, and it was a promise.
The party ended not long after. Ganon said a good bye to every single person, including the indifferent Impa, and thanked them for having come and for their gift. His eyes kept flitting back to where Zelda was talking avidly with Daruk and tipsily leaning against Link, who had wrapped an arm around her to keep her upright. The sight made his mouth tick upwards.
Purah flounced up to him near the end and said, “She’s doing better, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Her gift. She was crushed when all the prototypes kept failing.” Purah tilted her head.
“Prototypes?”
“Yeah, the ones that she was working on to try to permanently cage calamity so she didn’t keep having to burn it out of you,” said Purah, voice flippant. “Those ones.”
He felt very light on his feet, suddenly. “She didn’t mention.”
“Oh, she didn’t tell you?” Purah tried to look dismayed or guilty, but completely failed. She wanted Ganon to know what Zelda had been working on, it was clear. “Oops. Well, she seemed pretty upset a few days ago, but is doing better now, right?”
“Yes, she was,” said Ganon, slowly, piecing together all of the little bits. He found himself suddenly grateful for Purah’s uncanny intelligence, her correct assumption that Ganon would not be crushed by Zelda’s failure, but instead buoyed by her thoughtfulness. Zelda’s dark mood after his last calamity episode was Zelda being furious with herself for failing prototypes. How many hours had she spent, toiling away with Purah? Had she gone to Purah or Link after the Ganon’s latest episode, cried in frustration as she was wont to do at times?
It was like something loosened in his chest. She wanted him to have a choice, to have freedom, as much as he did. He wanted to embrace her, tightly, shake her guilt out of her. He wanted to tell her, Just the thought is enough reassurance for me—just the fact that you are this thoughtful, that you want me to stop being in pain, that you understand all of the dark thoughts roiling around in my head, is enough.
No wonder Link had refused, so adamantly, to go to the stables. Had wanted Zelda to give the gift all by herself, when clearly it had been a joint effort, just so Zelda could be showered with gratitude and love.
Those two. Ganon thought his heart might burst. They could be silly sometimes, impetuous with youth, but then, out of nowhere, they did something earth-shattering, could sweep the ground out from Ganon and leave him dazed with the understanding of how much he loved them, how lucky he was to have them.
“Thank you, Purah,” he said, sincerely.
Purah winked at him from behind her round glasses. “What for?”
They finished off the rest of the wine in the queen’s bedchambers. Zelda brought a platter of small delicacies and insisted on hand feeding it to Ganon, her slim fingers lingering on his lips, fiddling with his beard, stroking his chest. In between the intricately-crafted sweets, they drank the dry red wine, Zelda giggling and tipping her head against Ganon’s chest, Link watching them with fondness creasing his eyes. They drank, ate, drank some more, and started losing clothes along the way, until suddenly it was clear where the night was going. The platter was discarded, the last of the wine drained, and then he had his arms full of Hylian, both of them trying their best to kiss him and each other at the same time.
Zelda was kissing him, her thighs straddling him obscenely as Link started sliding the blue dress off of her, the fabric loose enough that he could just tug it down to reveal her corset, sleeves and all puddling at her waist, the softness of her breasts spilling out at the top of her corset. Ganon pulled away, the better to admire her when Link undid her corset and tugged it off of her.
“Beautiful,” he said, roughly, admiring the way pinkness flushed all the way down her sternum. He thumbed his hands over her nipples; her eyes, which were already half-lidded, shut entirely and she moaned, rocking down on him. And then she moaned again, even louder, as Link wormed a hand under her dress and began busily working at her. Ganon could hear the slick sounds even from where he was kissing at her fine, regal neck.
“I—ah, Link—this is your birthday, Ganon,” she gasped, her head falling forward to rest against his shoulder.
“Is that so?” Ganon tugged Link forward, kissing him insistently, licking into his mouth and biting at his lush bottom lip, all while Link’s hand never stopped moving. “And what of it?”
“Well, we thought—perhaps both of us—oh—could um, make you the center of attention—“
He could see how they wanted it: both of them, lavishing attention on him, making him spend once, twice, before they finally brought themselves pleasure. And he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. It sounded like torture.
“What a delightful thought, love,” he said instead, placidly, even as he began to wriggle his way lower. “Will you do me a favor, though? Come up here for a moment—yes, the dress can go, thank you. Yes, now—“
Zelda moaned, shocked, as he lowered her onto his face, immediately licking a stripe up her soaking cunt. “Oh, Ganon.”
Now this, he thought, smothered between her thighs, was a birthday present.
Zelda was embarrassed by how much she loved this position, he knew. If he ever dared to suggest it, she would immediately reject it, citing the sensation of being so exposed, her fear of accidentally strangling him, and the list went on until he gave up. But like this, she was soft and trembling, rocking forward on his tongue and making increasingly higher, desperate sounds as he licked and tugged her lips apart with a hand and moaned into the sweetness of her cunt. He loved feeling her shake atop of him, loved how she got his chin so wet that it ran down his neck.
“Right there,” she gasped, and then panted as he fluttered his tongue against her. “Ganon, oh, oh—“
He heard, more than felt, Link moving, and was unsure what the other man was doing until he felt his cock freed from his smallclothes and the head enveloped in a warm, wet mouth. And then Link went and tried to choke himself on Ganon’s cock.
He almost succeeded. Ganon felt the tightness of Link’s throat, flexing around the head of his cock, and could not help the involuntary thrust of his hips. Link gagged a little, went back up, and then sank back down even more determinedly, fingers pressing up behind Ganon’s balls, his triceps locking down Ganon’s legs to prevent any more thrusting.
Ganon groaned into Zelda, the vibration buzzing her clit. Zelda moaned and got even slicker; he reached up and slid a finger into her, crooking it, and her knees buckled. He grabbed her with his other hand to keep her upright, urging her to rock forward, to move faster and faster on his soft tongue, his finger curling in and out of her. He was grateful to have her on his mouth, as it gave him something to concentrate on beyond the wet sounds of Link suckling on his cock desperately, his hand stripping what his mouth couldn’t reach, the blinding ecstasy of his hot little mouth. Instead, he listened to her ragged breathing getting higher and higher, Zelda shrieked and came, half hunched over him.
“Oh, oh, give me a second,” she said when he continued rocking her on his tongue. He allowed her to slip free, her body still shaking with aftershocks, but then tugged her to him, made her kiss him, made her taste herself on his tongue and felt her tremulous moan reverberate through her entire body as he licked into her mouth.
She tore away, gasping, her eyes glazed over, and she said, “You haven’t even seen your present.”
“Another?” he asked in disbelief.
“Just a little one.”
She tugged Link up and off Ganon’s cock, Link’s mouth red and swollen from his efforts, Ganon’s cock hard and proud. Ganon watched, amused and stroking himself, as she undressed Link, her efforts continually impeded by the way Link kept trying to put his mouth over her breasts, her stomach, her arms, any reachable part of her. As she tugged his undershirt shirt off of his body to reveal his scarred torso, he slid two fingers into her and she almost fell on top of him, her mouth open in a perfect O.
“Stop that,” she said after a ragged breath, thwarted by the way he continued to finger her, thumbing over her clit in a way that had to be too sensitive for her, this soon after an orgasm. “You—Link!”
Ganon met Link’s mischievous eyes and knew that they were in agreement. He leaned over, his hands running over Zelda, his cock a hard line against her back. He palmed her breasts, stroked the insides of her thighs, and said, “One more, love, just one more. Look how beautiful you are, like this.” He nipped at her ear and a strangled sound ripped out of her.
Link unbuttoned his pants, pulled out his leaking cock and began stroking himself. His eyes didn’t leave Zelda’s cunt; he was up to three fingers, fucking wetly in and out of her, and she was swaying, still on her knees. Ganon guided her to lean back against him, his hands still idly petting over her nipples and tweaking them, Link following to remain close.
“There you go,” he said, tugging her thighs open for Link and admiring the wetness gathered across them, the way it dampened her pubic hair to a dark gold. He slid fingers across her pink cunt, groaned at how soft and slick she was. “All ready for him, aren’t you? Beautiful.”
Zelda looked up at him, mouth desperate, and he gave her what she wanted. It was an uncomfortable craning of his neck, but he managed to kiss her, and swallowed her moans as Link pressed the tip of his cock against her cunt and pressed in.
Link sighed as he seated himself fully in Zelda, eyes closed in ecstasy. His pants were still on, just tugged low enough to free his cock. He paused for only a moment, as Zelda tore her mouth away from Ganon’s so she could breathe, and then his eyes flashed open. He fucked in, hard, and Zelda made a high, hurt noise that would’ve been worrying if she wasn’t also dripping, the slick sounds indecent.
They were so beautiful that it took Ganon’s breath away. He groaned in Zelda’s ear, and reached down to rub at her clit.
Zelda made a strangled sound at the sensation, almost a scream, the sound cut off by Ganon slipping fingers into her mouth. Link continued thrusting, his pelvis bumping up against Ganon’s fingers, his face set in concentration as he swiveled this way and that until he found the spot that made Zelda’s eyes open wide, her teeth sinking into Ganon’s fingers.
“Ah, found it,” said Ganon, and was rewarded by a flash of Link’s smile.
Zelda’s arms were above her head, and she was hanging onto Ganon with all her might, her fingers biting into his shoulders. Link leaned forward and mouthed, very gently, at her nipple just as Ganon circled her clit, patient and rhythmic. He listened to the way her moans, still muffled by his fingers, started changing in pitch, started becoming higher and breathier.
“Oh gods, I’m going—I—“
And then she was having her second orgasm, twisting so ferociously in Ganon’s grasp that he knew to hold her all the tighter so she had something to thrash against. He tore his fingers out of her mouth so he could hear that raw sound she made whenever she came, felt his cock blurt out a spate of precum at the sound of her pleasure. She seemed to come forever, moans petering off into high sounds that trembled and shook through her entire frame, as Link slowly rocked in and out of her with his teeth bared and gritted.
Link groaned, tipping his head against her chest, his breathing hard. He hadn’t come, was still tucked neatly into Zelda. After a second, looked up at Ganon through his sweaty bangs. With one hand, he signed, Pants off.
Ganon quirked an eyebrow at him, as Link was the only one wearing pants still, but clearly had no desire to remove himself from Zelda. Gently, Ganon untangled himself from Zelda, who was still insensible, and slid to where Link’s pants were still most of the way on. He tugged them off and then, when it still wasn’t apparent what Link wanted him to do, succumbed to temptation and reached to slide fingers over Link’s hole.
He intended to just tease, to provide some relief for his neglected cock by rubbing it over where Link wanted it, but instead he found his mouth drying. There, tucked snugly in him, was a plug, Link stretched obscenely around it with bits of lube still gleaming on his taut rim.
“Fuck,” said Ganon, stunned.
“Happy birthday,” said Zelda, and he looked up to see them both watching him, matching smirks on their faces, Link rocking shallowly into Zelda. The devils. The absolute vixens.
Zelda reached to the dresser and tossed him the tube of oil there, her fingers still idly combing through Link’s hair. He uncapped it with shaking fingers and spilled too much of it into his hand, slicking up his cock and groaning at the sharp relief.
“Have you been walking around like this all dinner?” Ganon asked, stroking his cock with one hand and using the other to shallowly fuck the plug in and out. Link didn’t answer, busy gasping at the sensation. “You beautiful whore. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have waited so long to say goodbye to everyone. Just kicked them all out and had you on that dining table. You would’ve wanted that, wouldn’t you?”
Zelda giggled and said, “I felt that, Link.”
Ganon couldn’t wait any longer. He ripped the plug out, which made Link whine, high and needy, and then started working his cock in to replace it. The tight heat was—he thought he could cry, such was the sensation.
Link seemed similarly affected, gasping and nosing at Zelda’s breasts like he’d never been fucked before. Ganon ran a hand down the line of his back, caressed his pert ass, and then smacked it, heavy and loud. And Link moaned, twitching back and forth like he didn’t know whether to fuck into Zelda or fuck back onto Ganon’s cock. His gaze, when he turned to look at Ganon, was wild.
“You okay, Zelda?” asked Ganon, conscientious that she had already had two orgasms and was probably feeling sensitive.
He was not prepared for the smile she gave him, a dangerous look in her eyes. “Don’t worry about me.” She stroked over Link’s ears, kissed the delicate tip of his left one, and they both smiled at the tiny, broken sound Link made. “You should give him what he wants.”
Ganon and Link both reacted the same way—Ganon’s hands tightened, reflexively, on Link’s hips, and Link clenched around him, so tight that Ganon almost lost it then and there.
“Yes, my queen,” said Ganon, and began to fuck him.
He couldn’t last long, not after so much teasing, not in the face of the sight of Link, twisting and senseless with pleasure between the force of Ganon fucking him and the wet heat of Zelda; Zelda herself had her mouth open, her brow pinched with sensation. Ganon aimed for the prostrate and knew he’d found it when Link’s cries pitched up and his arms gave out, until he was putting his full weight on Zelda, his body rubbing against hers as Ganon fucked them both. He could hear the steady thump thump thump of the bed slamming against the wall, just barely audible over the noises the three of them were making, and felt no shame at all, whatsoever, for the ruckus they were causing. Let everyone know the pleasure they were all feeling.
“Oh, oh,” Zelda was moaning, biting down, looking oversensitive and flushed, Link rubbing his face between her breasts, leaving red marks on their undersides. His fingers were digging bruises into her hips, her leg wrapped around him and bouncing with every thrust. Ganon grabbed the soft underside of her knee, used it as leverage to make the rhythm even tighter, and Link let out a pained sound of pleasure.
He knew he was getting close, but he wanted it to last. He wanted to continue this, fucking those sweet sounds out of Link, those high noises out of Zelda, watching the two of them rake lines across each other’s skins. Tormented from the pleasure he was giving them.
“Beautiful,” he whispered into Link’s ear, watched it flick from the sensation, and then bit down on the lobe, tugged at it. Link froze up and then tightened, vice-like, around Ganon, and he knew the younger man was coming, could feel the way his hips were kicking forward, his hole fluttering around Ganon’s cock.
Ganon reacted quickly, pulling Link out from Zelda in a swift gesture that ripped sounds out of the both of them. Zelda, catching on quickly, left her legs soft and splayed and Link doubled over as Ganon stripped his cock efficiently. Cum smeared all over her abdomen and stomach, his pink head rubbing against her belly button, as Link’s hips kicked forward, against Ganon’s tight grip, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly as Ganon fucked him over and over again, working every last drop out of him.
He quickly went back over to making ragged, oversensitive sounds, and at that, Ganon felt the curl of orgasm in his lower belly, felt his hips start to lose their precise rhythm. He pulled Link up, kissed at his cheek, tasted the salt there from tears, and that was what caused him to grunt and jerk and spend in Link, the orgasm hitting him so hard that everything went soft and fuzzy for a second.
He thrusted once, twice, and then pulled out. Link whined at the emptiness and Ganon soothed him, kissing his slack mouth, stroking over his belly. They fell onto Zelda, who made a muffle sound of protest at their combined weight. She tolerated it for about a minute before she started wriggling and making complaining sounds.
Happy birthday, Link signed, when he could move his hands.
Ganon chuckled and kissed him again, then kissed Zelda for good measure, long kisses, lacking any heat. Zelda kissed him back and then drew her head away.
She was frowning, and for a second, panic clinched at Ganon’s heart before she said: “This was supposed to be about you.”
He could not help but laugh at the sight of her, her face set in a royal pout that was thoroughly incongruous with the absolute mess her hair had become. This did not help her mood; she looked genuinely distressed and he crowded into her space, kissed her tangled hair and temple until the frown melted away.
“Trust me,” he said, as Link sleepily wrapped an arm around Zelda’s waist, having crawled up to nestle on her other side, his legs tangled with hers and Ganon’s. “It was.”
“Well,” said Zelda grudgingly, “as long as you had a good time.”
“A good time?” Ganon laughed, the movement jostling Link enough that the other man cracked open an irritated eye. “Oh, my loves. Thank you, for giving me the most wonderful birthday I could imagine.”
They both blushed at that, Zelda fighting back a pleased smile. He tucked his chin into her golden hair and allowed his eyes to drift close.
He knew they should clean up. In a moment, they would, he reasoned; one of them, if not him, would spur the others to the bathhouse and its softly steaming interior. And then they would go to sleep, as they always did, tucked together, and the next day, they would be together still, and the prospect of those endless days filled him with joy, even as consciously he knew that things could not, would not, always remain beautiful and halcyon. But right now, warm and satiated and full of good food after a good night, he could not muster up the strength to do anything but be content.