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Weekend days in Hateno were a lazy thing.
Zelda had always known of the village’s serene atmosphere, having had the luck to witness it under her own accord on the few times her father’s eyes hadn’t been fixed on her every move and action. But nothing could compare to waking up her back pressed against the chest of her lover. Not even the overnight boom of Cece’s brand had been able to wash that otherworldly calm that reigned over the village.
She caressed Link’s hair, untangling strands with her fingers. It was messy, its length rivalling her own. Light seeped through the window, staining their skins with gold. The man shifted, his hands roaming across her chest until they wrapped around her waist. He sighed contentedly against the back of her neck.
She turned over herself as carefully as she could.
Throughout her pilgrimage across Hyrule, back a hundred years ago, she had quickly caught on to the fact that her appointed knight was nothing if not a light sleeper. The shallowest of sounds would wind up being victims of his scrutiny: branches snapping whenever the weight of wild animals was too much to bear, the patter of stray raindrops against stone after a peculiarly abundant downpour, the sound of grass getting crushed under soles.
Then, in the flickering glimpses she had been able to catch after he had woken from his century long slumber, she had witnessed his sleepless nights. The ones that went hand in hand with hordes of monsters slain under the edge of his sword, of helping the people around him to avoid tending to himself. It was on those nights she feared the weight of his memories and rediscovered duty would be too much for the man she had loved for so long.
However, as much as guilt tried to trip him over the edge, each and every single time he’d get back on his feet.
Now, with his arms snaked around her, breath hot against her neck, she marvelled at the way morning turned that same man into a snoring cocoon.
Zelda’s eyes got caught on his chest. She absentmindedly trailed her fingertips across the scars she had failed to protect him from, their shape familiar under her hand and vivid on her mind. The ones that would have killed him.
Her breath hitched. It was on quiet moments like these that her mind spiraled back to the events from hundred years ago.
Was there anything she could have done differently that would have changed the outcome of the Calamity? Or had their fate been written on stone long before they had even been born?
If there was, she’d never know. She hunched a bit over herself.
The ghost touch finally got a reaction out of him. His arms tightened around her, cradling her impossibly closer. His touch, a constant strong enough to make her body lose all of its tension and relax back into his arms.
“Link?” she whispered tentatively, yet received no response from the man. She ran her knuckles across his cheek. “Link, wake up. I know you are awake.”
The man absentmindedly murmured against her skin but still wouldn’t open his eyes. Zelda drummed her fingers against her lover’s chest, a disinterested hum leaving her lips.
“Well,” she mumbled, “seeing that the Hero of Hyrule has decided to spend all of his morning sleeping, I guess I could try my hand at cooking breakfast for him.”
In a slow, deliberate way, she pushed the cover of the sheets away from her body, slipping a leg over the man laying with her. A chuckle hit her chest. She brought her eyes down to meet his.
Link raised an inquiring eyebrow that she met with an innocent smile.
Years spent under her father’s iron gaze had ensured that she had ended up being incredibly good at playing coy. And at hiding hazardous machinery in places no one would ever guess, but she needn’t have to make use of this particular ability as of lately.
Not that she thought it would even work with Link around. He had always had a hidden sixth sense when it came to the princess. Even before they had actually begun getting along.
Zelda blinked twice. Link grunted as he incorporated and rested his back against the frame of the bed, his arms still draped loosely around the woman’s waist.
He leaned forward and placed a light peck on Zelda’s lips. “You’re not getting anywhere near that pot again.”
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She would have loved to debate Link’s statement, defend whatever could be saved of her poor cooking skills. But she knew none of her comebacks would be enough to deflect Link’s winning argument: she had once managed to cause the pot to explode.
The incident, the term they had both stuck with, had gotten Zelda banished from anything that remotely resembled a kitchen. Unless it involved elixirs. Not even centuries of soaring the skies had taken away her mastery when it came down to handling monster parts.
In her defense, nobody had warned her about the reaction the abhorrent mixture of fire fruit and bomb flower (just a small portion, she wasn’t that reckless) she had concocted would have.
(‘Bomb flower’, had deadpanned Link when he heard about the last ingredient. ‘What did you expect?’
That what had she expected? Well, she didn’t know. That was what the experiment—‘mixture, I mean,’ she had quickly rectified, was for. Link had crossed his arms, clearly not believing a single word. They both absolutely knew what the result was going to be.)
Anyways. Nothing she could do about it now.
Zelda focused back on the present and on her golden horse happily pacing in front of her. She ran her hand across her steed’s white mane, the creature nudging against her sides.
Zelda giggled. “You are such a good horse, are you not?”
The animal neighed, basking in the attention its rider was showering him with. Link’s own horse bumped her, demanding a fair share of her current caretaker’s love. Zelda laughed and complied.
Meanwhile, Link hummed by the cooking pot under the tree’s rising shadow. He watched Zelda’s exchange with the horses, a smile tugging at his lips.
It had been minutes since the princess had started eyeing the pond next to their house when she finally decided to head there, not before retrieving a basket from their stable.
When Zelda returned and rushed into her study under the well, carrying back the basket—now filled with apples—and a suspiciously frog shaped creature tugged in her hand, Link didn’t ask a thing.
She got back out seconds later and rejoined the confused animals that awaited her. They didn’t spare a second before feasting on the fruits she offered. She saved some she’d bring to Link though.
“You’re spoiling them,” called Link.
Zelda chuckled in response, without looking at him. “I wonder from whom I got that,” she countered. She wouldn’t act as if she didn’t recall Link’s ability to name every single one of the knight’s stable horses, or he would sneak in snacks for them when he wasn’t on duty.
She gave the horses one last pat and left them to ravage what was left inside the basket. She put the apples she had kept for herself near the pot then rolled to the ground next to Link with open arms.
Zelda stretched on the grass that surrounded their home, the last drops of dew that hung off their edges sticking to her skin. She turned so that she faced Link, who had turned his back at her to sort out his ingredients along with the apples.
Zelda could have stared at his back all day. With his shirt on, this time. It had taken a bit of back and forth for him to get it back before his own determination overpowered over the princess’ own stubbornness on this occasion, forcing her to reluctantly hand it back to its original owner.
The woman had finished by shrugging. She knew the garment would be back on her by the end of the day.
Zelda inhaled deeply, watching Link work diligently on their breakfast. By him, he had put down rock salt and tabantha wheat for bread, as well as chunks of goat butter to accompany the apples. She smiled, glad he had understood what the fruit she had brought was for.
Hot buttered apples were a heavy choice for the first hour in the morning, but a tasty and sweet one nonetheless.
Zelda admired Link’s skill. In her eyes, cooking seemed like a science itself. One that frustratingly escaped her understanding as much as she tried.
Maybe that was why she wouldn’t miss Link’s awed expression whenever a dish turned out to be delicious for nothing in the world. She could relate to the satisfaction that that kind of success brought.
Slowly but surely, the dish took form. Its dizzily sweet scent hung around them, highlighting the apples' gorgeous appearance. Zelda watched as Link reached out for two plates and started picking the slices baking inside the pot, smothered in the butter.
Once they were served on the wooden plate, Zelda reached out for the block of butter that Link hadn’t used and cut a couple bits. She placed them on the apples that hadn’t been sliced, before the fruits’ surfaces had cooled down.
Eating inside was the couple’s regular. On warm summer days like that one, however, they’d sit by the bridge, overlooking the fish that calmly swam across the river under the Hylians’ hanging feet.
Zelda pinched one of the apple slices with her fork and brought it up to her mouth. It was warm and sweet, the taste melting on her tongue. She hummed. It carried love.
She gently brought her piece of cutlery back down, letting it clink on the wooden surface. She stole a look in Link’s direction, only to find him absolutely destroying his own meal, eating like a starved man. They locked gazes.
Link stopped moving mid bite, the apple gripped in his hand. Zelda reached out and wiped off a stain of butter out of the corner of his lips. She proceeded to place a kiss on the spot she had just cleaned. His eyes narrowed in a smile. He quickly cleaned his mouth before attacking the fruit again.
Crockery was pushed aside the moment they were finished with it.
Link stretched, a satisfied hum escaping his lips, and let his weight fall on the grass. Zelda followed his example and curled against his chest. Link’s silence accompanied Zelda as she rambled, telling the man about her latest investigations in Lookout Landing.
The princess remembered a time when her knight’s silence would completely unsettle her. She didn’t know what to make of it. Did he despise the very thought of talking to her? Was she such a disgrace the Goddess that Her chosen hero would even dare look her in the eye?
She had only needed to open up a bit to him to discover her assumptions were all baseless.
Zelda’s words were only interrupted by the sounds of the rising Hateno. Link shifted slightly under her, looking at somewhere in the distance. Zelda followed Link’s gaze and found him staring at the Hateno Lab, standing tall at the summit of the village’s tallest slope. Link turned towards her.
“Want to go up there?”
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The Hateno Lab brought a sense of melancholy Zelda had grown used to during the seven years that followed the Calamity’s demise.
Every single corner reminiscing of the Sheikah technology that had been the subject of all of her interest for such a long time.
Zelda’s fingers traced the head of an ancient arrow, its characteristic blue blade gone to never come back. It had been the same with the rest of the ancient civilisation’s technology, Divine Beasts included.
Her people’s best interest were always in her head when she had taken the decision to have them dismantled. As much good as Zelda thought they could cause long term, a conclusion she had gotten out of her numerous studies and experiments, it was undeniable that the harm caused was even greater. It was fair for the people of Hyrule to be distrusting after everything that had happened.
Later on, if only for a short span of time, Zelda had thought that maybe the Zonai’s inventions could be used as a replacement, but they had shut down and disappeared along with Mineru’s spirit.
That left Purah as the head of the newest study to provide Hyrule with a new source of energy.
Zelda was actually very active in the surveillance of the creation of this technology. Not really because of concern (although she knew Purah, if left unsupervised, was very much capable of blowing up half a mountain for the sake of science), but just out of sheer curiosity.
That was another thing time wouldn’t be able to take away from her. She was an inventor at heart. That way, she’d always find herself up until the sun rose, looking for ways of getting their new gadgets to work.
Right after defeating the Calamity, her energies had seemed endless. She’d spend her days from one corner of Hyrule to the other, Link trailing along with her, combining her duties as the monarch with her work as an investigator.
Early mornings. Tiresome nights. Fruitless rest. Looking back, that could easily resume how the first months had gone for her the moment she had set foot on Karariko for the first time in a hundred years. It had gotten to the point where she was basically running on fumes, only resting whenever Link would plead (or trick) for her to do so.
(“It is imperative that I finish writing this report and send it back to Central Hyrule right away.”
“I’m sure Purah will manage to survive a couple of hours more without it, Zelda.”
The princess rubbed her eyes, which were a constant menace of closing off completely. She stubbornly shook her head to get her brain to keep on going. She slurred her feather across the page, although she could barely make out what she was writing anymore.
That was when Link gently sat down next to her. He guided her head to rest on his shoulder and effortlessly slid the feather out of Zelda's loose grip. A soft lullaby lulled her to sleep as he started tracing circles on her back.
“Close your eyes,” the man whispered next to her.
She didn’t want to. Not yet. The report no longer had a place in her consciousness, which so hardly fought to stay up. No, now she wanted to relish the moment with Link for just a moment more. The warmth of the bonfire and her knights arms wrapped around her were very enticing though.
A kiss on the forehead was what did it for her. Her eyes succumbed before the rest of her followed suit.)
When she had come back after the Upheaval, she had expected to continue forward the only way she knew, the way she had done for the past seven years. Purah, however, didn’t have the same idea the young monarch had.
“Can’t afford to have a sleep deprived princess running around.”
Despite the playful nature of her words, they held a hint of genuine concern. Purah, one of her oldest friends, knew her like the back of her hand and wouldn’t let her get to the point it had before.
Which was why now weekends were her obliged rest days.
(They were also Link’s. Right after basically ordering the princess to stop being the glorified overworker she was for two days a week, Purah had pointed a finger at the hero’s chest, commanding him to do so as well. The poor man hadn’t even had the chance to protest before the Sheikah had stormed off.)
The couple now overlooked Hateno from the top of the hill. Wind swayed their hair. The end of Zelda’s tickled the back of her neck. Their sleeping robes had been discarded in favour of more suiting ones before heading off. Zelda had pulled Link’s unruly hair into a half ponytail, he had helped her fix her braids on top of her head.
The non-stop tapping of Link’s fingers against her own caught Zelda’s attention. She chuckled.
Link had never been one to stay put for long periods of time, always running from one place to the other, to where his heart dictated.
Even during his time serving as a Royal Guard, which required long hours of standing in place, unmoving as stone, Link had always been the first to bolt out of his position to chase after the fugitive princess whenever she’d decide to furtively run away from the castle’s cold security.
Zelda counted the seconds in her head. Luckily, she wasn’t one big fan of staying put either.
Link got up with a jump and scanned their surroundings. He picked up a shield that lay abandoned near the lab. What had a shield to do in a supposedly safe Sheikah laboratory? Zelda had no idea. But at this point, she wasn’t even surprised of the most random things they’d find around Purah’s old study.
Link weighed the shield on his hands and nodded at whatever he had made out of it. Zelda stood up from her sitting spot and regarded him with a raised eyebrow, Link gave her a lopsided grin.
Zelda had had the chance to learn some basic shield surfing under Link's teaching and knew he had good control on the matter, but if she was to be honest, the princess was a bit reticent of the idea of balancing two people on a single shield. She had trusted Link with blind faith in way more dire situations before, though. She could do it again on this one.
Link offered Zelda a hand. “Careful here,” he warned, guiding her as she stumbled to get on the shield, which Link had placed on the ground and secured under his shoe.
Once her feet were as steady as they could be, Link wrapped his arms around her waist, prompting Zelda to hold onto his shoulders for balance.
“Ready?”
“Yes!” She nodded frantically. “I am ready!”
Without wasting a second, he pushed them both forward down the hill and the shield quickly picked up on speed.
A laugh tore out of Zelda’s throat. The wind hit against her face, causing her hair to messily shift behind her ears and leaving her unable to open her eyes for more than a second. Her heart pounded on her chest. The shield slowed down by the end of the hill, leaving them wobbling on it.
Zelda jumped off and stretched with a long sigh. After a moment of silence where Link left the shield to rest against a nearby tree, the princess turned towards him.
“I will challenge you to a race one of these days,” she declared.
Were all the odds of losing on her side? Yes, absolutely. She was convinced she’d enjoy the experience a lot nonetheless.
Link chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind, just so that you don’t catch me off guard,” he joked, softly bumping his lover.
The sound of wood snapping stole the couple’s attention. From behind a set of bushes surrounding the outskirts of the village, scolds broke out, a mix of ‘be quiet!’s and ‘they’re gonna spot us…’s muttered by voices both of them easily recognised. And as if that wasn’t enough to completely betray their presence, a big brown bun peeked out of the taller leaves.
They exchanged a look. Link walked towards it and poked it with a nearby stick. Squeals broke out. Slowly, several kids stepped out of the bush: Teebo, Aster, Narah, Azu, Sefaro, Nebb and Karin, with her bun sitting proudly on top of her head.
Zelda put her hands on her hips. The children innocently smiled at her.
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Zelda had never been one to deny visits to whoever needed her. Every day, she’d have villagers at her door. Some came with questions, others simply wanted to speak with the soon-to-be-queen, bring her ‘offerings.’ (She could count with her fingers the amount of times a gift for her had been labelled as such. A gift.)
That included the Hateno children, who had apparently made it their personal duty to visit her every single day she spent in the village.
At some point, a boundary had to be set. To ensure the princess’ rest, she wouldn’t be taking visits on weekends. But it was clear that that rule stopped applying the moment she took a step beyond the bridge that connected their house to the rest of Hateno.
Zelda leaned on the wall of Hateno’s school, the one whose whole building process she had led (with the very much indispensable help of Hudson.) Next to her, Karin proudly told the princess about her self-imposed guarding duty over the woman’s house while she had been away.
The rest of the kids fluttered excitedly around Link, except for Teebo, who was gazing towards the woods, always vigilant of the village’s outskirts.
“Where’d ya get your cool sword?” asked Nebb.
“Got lost in the forest as a kid and got convinced by a tree to pull it out of its pedestal.” Link deadpanned.
Nebb stopped inspecting the swordsman scabbard to look at him with a raised eyebrow, his clear disbelief for ‘spy number three’s statement. Even Narah, who was spinning around the man, stopped dead on her tracks to stare at him, a confused look plastered on her face.
“What forest?” the girl cautiously asked.
“The Lost Woods.”
Silence fell as the kids' expressions turned solemn. They exchanged looks that were charged with mixed emotions, their curiosity menacing to overpower the respect they held for the forbidden forest.
Right, even over a hundred years later, the Lost Woods were still used as a bedtime story to scare the children and keep them away from the wilderness. Zelda could remember the rumors that would originate from the barracks and quickly spread around the castle whenever a squadron came back from the forest, their hands empty and no legendary sword hanging from the back of any of them.
Aster, unbothered and clinging to one of Link’s arms, testing how far up the man could lift her up, laughed from her position. “Next, you’ll say it was forged by the Goddess herself!” Link simply shrugged, prompting the kids to laugh even more.
Having decided to keep his identity as the Hero of Hyrule and the Goddess' chosen for himself and some spare others meant that people would just look at him as if he was a madman whenever he’d say stuff like that. When it came to kids, they usually just found that he was a funny person.
Karin pushed herself off from the wall she had been resting on next to the princess and approached her friends and Link. “You say you’ve been to the Lost Woods, right? What’s it like?”
“Oh, oh!” Narah piped in. “Mom told me there are evil spirits in those woods! No one who’s ever gone in there has come back the same!”
Despite the lighthearted tone the child held, her statement left the other children to look anxiously back at Link, hoping he’d deny her words.
The man hid his chuckle. Evil spirits were words that didn’t fit the koroks at all for those capable of seeing them. Link averted his eyes, letting them meet Zelda’s, and his smile fell into a bittersweet expression. Zelda’s gaze softened.
She understood that, after all, Norah’s words rang true inside both of their chests.
For a regular person, a trip to the Lost Woods would probably grant them a scare they wouldn’t forget in a long time. An experience that would be imprinted in their minds as a reminder of what happened when you wandered too far. But it was just a scare, an experience nonetheless. It wouldn’t prevent them from slipping back into their day-to-day life once more.
But what were the Lost Woods for a kid who had gotten his childhood robbed by the weight of a sword that he was oh so painfully tied to, and worn down by the responsibilities and the pressure that came with it? Would he ever get the chance to go back to who he had been mere moments before fate had crashed with no notice whatsoever?
And what about a princess that, with no time to mourn her lost ones, had taken the decision of leaving behind what was left of her beloved to set off to her home turned grave to hundreds of the people who had entrusted their salvation on her in order to hold captive what had murdered them all. What were the Lost Woods for her?
Zelda shook her head, chasing away the sombre thoughts that had suddenly come to plague her mind. Upon focusing again, she noticed that Link was trying to get away from the children, dismissing them with a lazy wave.
As much as Zelda cared about them, she had to admit the kids were a handful to handle, so she wasn’t surprised the moment Link had to step aside to leave them to their own devices.
Zelda placed her hands on her hips when Link popped down at her feet. “You should probably stop scaring the children.”
“A little bit of pranking won't do them any harm. I’m making their parents' jobs easier anyways.” Link nudged Zelda’s side. “Can’t have kids trying to infiltrate some haunted forest, right?”
Zelda shook her head incredulously as she slid down to sit next to the man. “Hopefully tomorrow I will not be hearing any parents’ complaints about their kid having nightmares due to some stories the mysterious local swordsman decided to spread around.”
Link shrugged unapologetically. Zelda eyes wandered up to the sky that unfolded over their heads.
To think she had spent millennia traversing them. Despite having been a mindless dragon all along, the sight brought melancholy with it. Zelda stretched as her eyelids fluttered.
The afternoon setting sun carried a warmth that seeped under her skin, lulling her to rest her head on Link. The laughter of children, the chirping of birds, the murmur of a nearby stream… It all cradled her gently. Somewhere inside her head, her brain weakly reminded her of a handful of pending tasks she had yet to finish with, but she couldn’t care less. She let her eyes close while feeling Link’s breath next to her as he leaned to kiss her…
And laughter shattered the couple’s small bubble. Zelda sat straight up with a jump and both of their heads snapped to the side, only to find the Hateno kids furtively whispering to each other, sets of ‘oooh’s grasping their ears.
“Princess Zelda and Link sitting in a tree—!”
Oh no. She’d have none of that. Her royal facade collapsed completely.
“A—Alright, alright everyone!” She frantically shook her hands towards the children, shooing them away. It hardly did a thing. She could still hear the children spelling the song under her own panicked noise. “It’s late now!”
Behind her, Link joined the chorus of laughter. Zelda pouted and looked at him with feigned betrayal. That only got him to laugh even more. She huffed indignantly, dusted herself off after standing up. Against all odds, when prompted, the children actually listened to her and made their way back home, which left Zelda and Link to bask in the silence.
Feeling Link’s stare fixed on the back of her neck, Zelda turned around and stared at the man with a frown. He innocently blinked at her. She tried to maintain her upset expression for longer, but, oh, how could she possibly stay angry when he regarded her with those sad puppy eyes?
She sighed and shook her head.
“Let’s go home.”
The sun setting on the horizon accompanied them on the way back.
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“Zelda…”
“Uhm?”
“Come to bed.”
“I have got to finish writing down my notes, dear.”
Link nuzzled against the crook of her neck, attempting to steal his lover’s attention away from her study.
She had disappeared, after slipping into her nightgown for the rest of the afternoon inside her well to study the frog she had found earlier that day.
Link had dropped by to keep her company on various occasions, not standing being away from her for long, but had kept a respectful distance between himself and the frog. Zelda had sent him an amused smile at that.
(“So…”
“You’re not getting me to eat it.”
Not even a hundred years later she’d manage to pull off that stunt. Shame.
It had been eventually discovered that hot-footed frogs and tireless frogs both were capable, in fact, of augmenting certain abilities, speed and stamina in that order, under the right circumstances, like she had told Link so long ago.)
At some point, she had fallen asleep on her notes, which she blamed on the post-lunch drowsiness that would usually lure her to close her eyes and rest. When she had woken up, a silent princess had been waiting for her in a small vase. Zelda had smiled at the sight.
Link traced his fingers across Zelda’s arm until they reached her hand. He slowly slid her writing feather out of her hand and placed it aside.
“It’s late, Zel’,” he murmured against her shoulder.
“Okay, okay…” The woman rested her head on her partner’s as she began stacking up the papers on her table.
Once she was done, she climbed up the stairs that led outside, Link following close behind. She immediately understood why Link had been coaxing her to go back already: night had fallen upon Hyrule. It probably was already past twelve.
A flicker of light caught Zelda’s eye. She pulled Link’s arm to stop him from making his way back to the house and gazed longingly towards the line of trees that kept their pond hidden in its clearing.
“Let me guess,” Link started, “fireflies?” A smile grew on Zelda’s lips.
The late hour would do nothing to stop her from observing the small creatures’ light up the night, given that she wasn’t tired yet. And seeing the lack of opposition coming from Link, he wasn’t either.
Zelda turned back at Link once they stepped between the swarm.
“Did you know? When cooked with various monster parts, sunset fireflies grant the ability to maximise one’s stealth, although I assume you already had that one figured out. Oh!” she lit up at the thought.” Did you know purple dye is produced using them? I learnt that from Sayge. It feels a tad bit obvious saying it out loud, but I had never given it enough thought before. And also— are you… are you even listening to what I’m saying?”
It didn’t look like it. Link’s gaze was fixed on her face, sure, but he seemed more interested in staring at her with loving eyes and a dumb smile. A helpless sigh escaped between Zelda’s lips.
Link closed the distance between him and his lover and got to his knees, taking her hand in his. He pressed a feather-like kiss on it, his blue eyes lifted to lock into hers. The gesture was familiar, its simplicity standing over the blur that the past sometimes became inside her mind. It was an invitation.
Royal balls came back to her mind. Overly designed dresses shifting over the pristine tiles of the castle’s Sanctum. Young men eager to meet the Crown Princess herself, the descendant of the Goddess. Zelda’s own green eyes and her dear knight’s meeting across a room filled with people that, for them, were less important than the other.
Her heart was doing cartwheels inside her chest, the intimacy of the gesture making her feel like a teenager hopelessly in love for the first time instead of a woman who had already kissed him hundreds of times.
A chuckle ripped Zelda out of her reverie. A hint of mischief was glowing in the back of Link’s gaze.
She wouldn’t even begin to wonder how she looked at that exact moment for him to be making such an expression. She didn’t need to, not when she could see herself reflecting over Link’s eyes: her lips parted in awe, cheeks flustered and warm, eyes fluttering.
The man cocked his head, a smug grin
“Is anything wrong, Your Highness?”
Zelda rolled her eyes and decided not to address Link’s barely dissimulated jab. She would be the bigger person about this. No get backs, no teasing. Just the figure of the wise and poised soon-to-be-queen.
But Link’s expression was very tempting.
Zelda caught Link’s lips in a swift move, catching him by surprise and stealing his breath away. His hands moved to grip her hair, but she pulled back before he could return the kiss.
“Hey!” Link’s pouty complaint mixed with a breathy laugh. He looked down, trying to hide his expression, but ultimately wasn’t able to tear his gaze away from Zelda’s. She found it adorable.
Link’s face was a sight Zelda would be marvelled at time and time again: his beautiful blue eyes staring at her with pupils blown wide, with his hands hovering over the strands of hair that fell right under her ears. His face completely tinted in red and chest heaving.
Staring back at her as if she was the most precious thing he had ever had the chance of laying eyes on. After so many years spent together, she had ended up believing that that was the case for him as much as it was for her. A laugh ripped out of Zelda’s lips as she got close to him again.
“What?” she giggled, trying to lift his head up when he buried it on her shoulder. “Oh, Link, look at me please?” The poor woman was frantically trying now to burst up laughing.
He groaned affectionately. “Zelda, why? You know I’m too shy.” The sentence came out muffled against her skin. She looked up to the firmament.
No stars adorned the dark sky, but that didn’t bother the couple. The fireflies would be their stars for the night.
She tangled her arms behind his neck, his hands moved until they reached her waist. Link lifted his head and rested his forehead on her’s. They both knew the steps that followed by heart, so they let their memory do the job for them. Their dance was reminiscent of those that would be held timely at the castle. The big difference between them was protocol.
Zelda and Link had thrown it out the window a long time ago.
What used to be a mesh of perfectly carved marble faces and jaw straining rehearsed smiles turned into a choir of loving stares meeting halfway and brushing lips under their joined hands.
Link sent her out for a spin, then pulled her back in and her back hit against his chest. Link placed a kiss on her lips. He started tracing a trail of them down her neck, applying gentle yet deliberated pressure with each of them. Zelda hummed slightly at the contact.
Zelda turned her head to catch Link’s lips, earning her a chuckle. She could spend eternity just revelling in the sound. The rest of their dance was a bliss that passed through her and, in a blink, was gone.
Later that night, once they were settled back home, Zelda giggled, her legs intertwined with Link’s over the sheets of their shared bed as he pestered her neck with playful, loving kisses.
She grabbed the sides of his head to look him in the eyes, which awarded her with the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.
Oh, how she loved her man.
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