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He had been gone for a few weeks. It was kind of usual to see him so little, even with the Calamity conquered, there was lots of stuff to fix around Hyrule. Monsters to be killed, towns to bring from ashes, people to be helped with whatever they needed.
Even without Zelda documenting and leading the organisation of their trips, he would have been out there doing what he’s been doing since his awakening: Always working, never stopping.
Link has such a sense of duty, rooted into his bones. Very few times I see him slow down… and I have a feeling he accepts those breaks only to please me too.
I’ve always wondered, how happy it actually makes him to be at the service of everyone; it’s pretty much his income source, a job. But he never directly agreed to such a demanding thing, and certainly not for it to last well after facing Calamity Ganon.
But I never ask, I don’t feel with the right to.
So I only do what I feel I can.
When he arrives in the middle of the night to his house, to give me a weekend of his life, I tuck him in bed with me. We get asleep in seconds; I normally get to wake up earlier than him, when he’s so tired his biological clock will turn off at the absence of actual work to be done.
Just when I’m finishing cooking breakfast he comes directly to the table, and I contain myself to not leave all what I’m doing to run and jump into his arms before he seats and I get to feel his eyes burning my back.
And we eat together, he washes the dishes and helps to clean around, all while we keep stealing looks from each other like we were still hiding our feelings.
We will always go outside and gather the food needed for whatever we are craving for dinner later on. We collect apples, take flowers and braid them in each other’s hair, have a picnic at the beach or walk to the ranch and stroll on the backs of our horses all day, only to come back at dusk to Hateno and cook outside.
We always have dessert too.
And I love hearing his laughter, and when he teaches me any of the thousands of things he can do, or when he heavily concentrates while taking a picture; the way his fingers caress my hair, or my waist, my face, my arms.
At night, when we go to sleep and I get that warmth he gives and I’ve been missing for weeks; my fingers trace his face and his frame, scattered with scars; I feel the ones that will be there forever, changing within his skin through the years; and I find new additions that take me aback and invite me to try to recognize… “who opened you?” “what tool brought you to the surface?”.
He chuckles sometimes, others he tenses; when he has the humour for it, he challenges me to guess. Then he tells me the actual story… I get better at the game with each visit.
Some of those nights one of us blurts out any kind of secret. Whatever was at the back of our throats, drowning our breath. We don’t usually cry, we don’t usually ask questions. Normally one only aknowledges, and hugs tighter, kisses faces and hands… brings the topic back nights later.
Others are filled with night terrors. And one of us will jump while drifting into sleep, at the end we don’t sleep at all until real tiredness claims us back and we pass out well into noon. He eats a lot more those days; and we stay at the town, walking. I buy him a new tunic, and I tell him we should dye it, laughing at his tension. At the end I dye something too and it’s his opportunity to grin with cockiness.
And sometimes I just wrap my arms around him; and how much I care for his bright soul and vibrant heart crushes me.
The night before he leaves I can’t sleep, he rests soundly holding my waist. He wakes up right at the hour he has to, and we go down to the table; I watch him pack, he eats some apples. And we go towards the door.
He has to hold my face so I dare to look at the infinite sky he has for eyes. My stomach sinks like I’m falling when he brings our temples together and I look even deeper into that opinionated and enigmatic blue. When I can’t take it anymore I smile without control and throw my arms around his neck, I kiss his ear and squeeze a bit before letting go.
We both leave the doorstep; he follows the path that leads out of town, to lose himself into forests and hills.
I go to the tiny barn next to the house, to saddle my horse to then leave it with his at the ranch.
So they wait like me his return.