Chapter Text
It was that time of the year again. With the arrival of September and the schools back in business, it meant that Zelda could finally do something with her time instead of reading and preparing lesson plans.
Miss Zelda Bosphoramus watched her students file into her classroom early that morning, many slower than the rest, and some eager to be seeing their friends again after a long summer away. She, on the other hand, was frantically looking for her glasses. She was looking under the desk, in her bag, her purse, the desk drawers, everywhere, yet she could not find them.
“Good morning, Ms. Bosphoramus. How was your summer?” One student came up to her desk as she finished settling up her things.
Zelda composed herself. Through her blurred vision, she could see the flaming red hair reminiscent of only two students at their school, only one being in her class. “My summer was wonderful, how was yours, Malon?” The girl giggled and began talking about her family’s ranch and how they had acquired a new horse. The girl went into excruciating detail of its coat, the colour, its temperament, all of which Zelda knew nothing about. The student was what Zelda liked to call ‘the resident horse girl’.
Once Malon finished her story, she went to find a seat next to another girl and they began talking. Zelda’s eyes drifted to the door as her last students waltzed in, early from the bell.
Across the hall, she peered inside the classroom where the door was propped open. From her angle, she had a clear view of the teacher’s desk and the blank white board. She noticed the teacher hadn’t arrived yet, but their classroom was filling slowly.
She turned back to her desk and resorted to looking for her glasses, the bell hadn't rung yet and wouldn't for another minute or so. As she rummaged through the final drawer, she only looked up when there was a crisp knock on her door. Her head turned briskly and she saw one of her colleagues leaning against the door, cup of coffee to his lips and another cup in his free hand. She could see the coy look in his eye as he held the mug up.
The blond hair pulled into a ponytail, the crystal blue eyes, and the devilish smirk, it would only be one other faculty member. “Miss, you forgot your beloved coffee in the teachers’ lounge again.” He laughed before taking a long sip from his own. She rolled her eyes and moved to the door and plucked the cup out of his hand.
“Thank you, Mr. Wilde. Greatly appreciated.” She smiled before embracing the heat against her palms. You wouldn’t have seen my glasses there as well, would you?” she whispered quietly before bringing the cup to her own lips.
He shook his head, his wheatish blond bangs following. He proceeded to discreetly point to the top of his head when the bell rang. “I need to get going or mine are going to run off in a minute.” He pushed himself off the doorway and entered the opposite classroom and waved to his students.
She turned back to hers and many were staring at her intently, as if something amazing had just happened. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” She asked them, placing her cup down to her desk and standing near her desk, hands resting on her hips.
One courageous girl, a giggly one too, raised her hand. Zelda called on her. “Miss Hyrule, do you like him?” she asked, her cheeks turning red.
It was only day one and they were already like that? Just fantastic.
“No, I do not like Mr. Wilde in the way you are insinuating.” Zelda brought a hand to her forehead and sighed. Her hand touched something hard. Something metallic.
Her glasses. She gripped her glasses out of her hands and grumbled under her breath. Sneaking a peek over at the door, she could see Link, facing her direction and snorting from his desk, but trying to hide behind his laptop.
That's why he made that motion to his head.
“Moving on,” she slipped the glasses to her eyes, now thankful she could see properly. “For those who don't know me yet, my name is Miss Zelda Bosphoramus, but you can address me as Miss Zelda if you wish. I shall be teaching you robotics and biology this semester.” A small amount of groans could be heard in the crowd, but Zelda ignored it.
She was homeroom teacher to the 11th grade students of Castletown Secondary School, a smaller school compared to the larger ones in their part of Central Hyrule, thankfully. She didn't have too many students to wrangle, her class being among the smaller the school had seen in recent years.
Oh the woes of being sixteen years old, Zelda was glad to say those years were long gone for her. Crushes, angst, those were definitely long gone.
At their first faculty meeting that afternoon, she learned quickly that Link was also the homeroom teacher for the graduating 12th grade class this year, something about finding a replacement after the last one quit three weeks ago and scrambling and stumbling upon a decently willing Link ready to take that challenge.
Link Wilde was among her old friends from university, but never had she dreamt that he would go on to teach mathematics of all things. He'd been well-known as having played on most sports teams, particularly winning many martial arts competitions, easily being found in the swim team and the university's gym.
She remembered all of the science classes she had encountered him in, she never thought he'd go into teaching, he seemed far too introverted for such a thing and she couldn't recall seeing him in any of her math classes either at the time.
Maybe he had found his calling then, good for him. She was glad to finally be back in touch with him again after so many years.
Everyone welcomed him with open arms and he gave a quiet thank you before retreating back to his chair next to hers and taking his lunch out.
“So, new guy, how are ya settling in?” Impa leaned over the table and looked at him, a smile on her face. “You like our rowdy grads?”
“They're alright.” He answered plainly, spooning up some of the stew he'd packed himself.
“Alright? They're little devils, you'll see! Tardies, absences, skipping, they do it all the time, you'll see.”
“They seemed fine to me.” He once again stated. “They paid attention in the first period.”
“Shocker, they never listen in my lessons! I'm always telling them to put their phones away.” Impa sighed. She was their English teacher with her vast knowledge of literature, essay writing and grammar rules. She was a stickler for the rules, saying that sticking to the basics was always better than breaking the rules and that was for exceptions. Zelda didn't quite agree with the sentiment, but she did agree about mastering the basics first.
She and Impa had taught at the school for the last two years together and proved to be quite good at their jobs, despite the rowdier batches of students they’d encountered.
Zelda was glad to cover Biology and Robotics, one of which was an elective and the other mandatory until their 11th grade. She dealt mostly with students who were fascinated and intrigued by the subjects and she always got along with hers, while Impa wasn't quite the case. The creative writing-motivated students loved her class but most weren't too interested in literature.
“Give him a few days, he'll hate it.” Revali, their drama teacher scoffed. Yep, drama class worked for him. Revali was always over exaggerating everything, from his general motions to everything he said, it was as if he stood on a stage with a blinding audience all the time.
Once the meeting ended, no one bothered to retreat back to their classrooms to finish lunch, there wasn't much time left until the next period started.
Link quietly noticed how everyone separated off into their own little groups; Urbosa and Daruk seemed to enjoy each other's company, and Zelda and Impa seemed to be a duo, although it seems as though he's been slowly absorbed into it.
“What class are you teaching after lunch and the last period?” Zelda asked quietly as she forked some of her salad.
“Data management to the 10th graders.” He said, finishing his lunch. “Last period is free.”
“Oh my last period is free too, my classroom is generally used as a study period for those without classes. I'm helping the new bio teacher for the middle schoolers settle in right after this.” She happily rambled.
“Mhm,” He nodded along, letting her talk about how she might get to do dissections with them later in the year and how excited she was about examining and showing them cell structures under their microscopes. “Can I come to your class later?”
“Hm? Sure! I'll show you some of last year’s robotics projects we made and all of our competi-”
“Dear, Zelda, don't talk his ear off.” Urbosa, their history teacher, laughed. “You're always so quick to make friends, don't scare him off too quick”
“It’s fine, I like it.” He looked at Zelda with the faintest of smiles.
Being a man in a teaching position, Link had been warned several times about things he should expect and teen girls flirting and having crushes was the biggest one.
People used to joke that one could find out if they were conventionally attractive by how the people around them acted and, while it had been a joke at the time, Link did not think himself very attractive.
Girlish, twink, twig, unmasculine, short. Those were the usual terms he was used to when used to describe him.
His students seemed to think he was pretty good looking, it seemed.
He's never heard more comments about his hair and how nice it might be to pull it, how nicely his clothes fit—he knew they were referring to what was under his shirt and pants—but how smackable his backside was, definitely took the cake. He's heard a dozen comments, and some he'd rather think he misheard.
Following the worst of the comments, he got very comfortable wearing a jacket in summer heat and sitting in his comfy chair, hidden behind the protection of his desk.
It took three days for that to set in, and in those three days, he picked up the habit of texting Ms. Zelda, who usually had lunch next door, whenever he had a student come by his classroom to seek further understanding of a concept.
His desk was in view of Zelda’s, meaning they were almost in view of each other at all times of the day, which resulted in some fun moments between them.
But Holy Hylia, the first three weeks were extremely uncomfortable.
He got flirted with very quickly. The batting eyelashes, all the little glances, the not-so-subtle passing of a phone number his way, none of it was very fun. He wasted no time in blocking the phone number, privating his social medias the moment he got that first ping from Urbosa finding his account online.
The only good part was that, because he was decently attractive, he didn't have to tell half the class to put their phones away every two minutes.
He liked his students though. The graduation twelfth grade class was composed of mostly kind people, some who were quite determined, and one or two clown-types.
He enjoyed hearing about upcoming weekend plans, and the things they talked about.
He learned that two of his students are dating—the student president and vice president— they're disgustingly sweet and they won’t leave each other alone, but their grades are fine. If anything, Link wishes they'd stop kissing at random moments of the class.
He's noticed that one of his students has an insane obsession with making his pompadour as tall as possible—mainly to stop the student president from seeing the board.
One of the girls has 4 hylian retrievers at home—he prays she has an audiologist, those dogs bark loudly and constantly, he has one—and three other girls go shopping every day after school and get Lurelian food.
They're a unique bunch and they're interesting, but he could really do without the comments on his appearance though.
Within the first week of teaching them, he realised last year’s teacher sorely lagged behind his teachings, meaning Link had to speed them up on the basics in order to still be in line with their curriculum. As much as he enjoyed speed-running his favourite games, it wasn't something he enjoyed doing with schoolwork.
But by the time September came to a close, they were almost caught up.
He looked up from the monitor on his computer to look around his class; everyone was doing their work… or trying to anyway. Some of the girls were talking and looked seconds away from a mental breakdown. Link didn't get it, their assignment was just a simple slope calculation, they should have learned that three years ago-
“THAT RATTY VOE BASTARD!”
Something told him they weren't talking about their assignment. He looked across the hall and saw Zelda signing ‘what happened?’ broadly.
“Ms. Riju, please quiet down.” He muttered. Half the class was looking at the three girls. The younger Gerudo girl had exclaimed so loudly, the other class had heard her loud and clear.
He glances back towards Zelda across the hall and she’s giggling behind her hand.
She’s cute when she smiles like that.
He bites his tongue to stop from laughing when her head snaps back towards her class. She’s a nervous wreck all of a sudden and she’s turning red by the second.
Must’ve forgotten she had class.
Now that he was thinking about class, it was awfully quiet all of a sudden.
He turned his head and realised that half the class was staring straight at him. The girls in the corner had menacing smiles and Link chose not to question it, instead averting his eyes and turning them back down to the stack of quizzes he had to correct.
Right, he could forget he saw all that. Safe to say it was teenagers doing teenager things.
With the arrival of October came the weather cooling and Halloween quickly approaching, there was more energy in their respective classes, which meant two things.
One, they were more rowdy and harder to control, and two, they could be bribed with candy and stickers all month long. Strange how teenagers loved stickers more than preschoolers...
It became common throughout the weeks for the students to see Mr. Wilde bringing Ms. Bosphoramus her mug of coffee just as the morning bell rang. It had to happen at least once a week and it offered precious oxygen to the fires of gossip amongst the girls in the class, even extending over to the history and drama classes respectfully.
Within the first few days of October, Link found it suspicious that the flirty comments completely ceased. Instead, it was side comments about his single life and how he should try to find a girlfriend... and how there was one very close all the time.
How they found out he was single? A ten second search into the school's system told him Riju, one of his students, was related to Urbosa, their history teacher. Mystery solved.
One morning, Zelda found herself sitting atop one of the desks in Link’s classroom, sipping silently from her cup while he talked about everything and nothing on the desk next to hers. Apparently, the headmaster wanted to combine their class due to wanting to use hers for something in the morning. And with both Zelda and Link teaching the first period of the day, he decided to put them together for a split lesson.
Once they saw the buses pull up outside his classroom window, she hopped off the desk and returned to her respective classroom to grab her computer and stood at his classroom door to redirect her students into his classroom. They’d spent the better part of the hour lifting the long tables in and out of the classroom in order to seat her small class. Zelda found herself incredibly grateful to only have nine students for the first period, compared to his whopping twenty-six.
Math was a mandatory subject after all, and Robotics was definitely an unpopular choice amongst the optional credits, but seeing as they utilised part of his class’ teachings in hers, it worked out rather well. They were in their current stages of building vehicles to house their mechanical parts that he learned was going to be automatic catapults. He wasn't going to lie, he wanted to take part in that, but alas, he was a teacher, not a student, and he had far too much on his plate.
From the board, he glanced through his peripherals at his desk where Zelda was and bit back a smile.
She found herself happily seated at his desk, spinning in the chair occasionally and watching the students interact together. His students seemed pretty excited about being paired with her class, he noted.
Maybe I’ll coordinate for a joint class together more often.
Of course, she didn’t notice that she had begun drinking from his mug rather than her own.
Her students definitely took notice and the only noise the two teachers could hear all of a sudden-apart from pencils on paper-was giggling. Link even turned around from the white board and shot them a look before continuing to write his parabola equations along with the explanations of how to use it.
Zelda snorted silently as he glanced her way curiously and continued drinking from the cup, completely missing the slight dusting of pink on his cheeks.
He was suddenly very glad he was facing the board and not the students. He brought his attention back to the equation he'd written on the board and the graph. Right… Parabolas… Why did he have to teach mathematics right now?
"And that's how you find the vertex without the graph." he inwardly cursed his voice involuntarily pitching. He could hear the giggling behind him and he knew everyone had heard it. Oh the shame of being a twenty seven-year-old man who's voice still cracked… He resisted the urge to slam his head through the wall and simply resigned to a quiet sigh. I'm never living that down…
He took a breath and forced away the heat from his face before turning around. "Are there any questions?"
Dozens of hands shot up. He internally sighed. He picked a random brunette girl in the back.
"How do you find the trough of a sinusoidal wave again?"
He stared flatly. "We haven't touched that yet, come back to this." He pointed to the board. He just started them on parabolas, why in the name of all things holy were they asking about that? He was reviewing that topic with the next class in his schedule though… Now that he took a closer look at her, he didn't think she was even in the current grade. "Are you in the right class?"
"I think so. Isn't this 11U Math?"
"No, this is 10U Math."
"Oh." The girl embarrassingly stood up and gathered her papers and made her way out of the class hastily through the giggles of the other classmates.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. There must've been some mix-up in the schedules again. “If anyone else is here for 11U, please follow Ms Agitha.”
Three more students hurried out of their classrooms, one dropping a pencil on the way out and another nearly losing half her books when she hastily picked them from her desk. How does the front office mix up schedules a full month into classes?
He sighed quietly and returned to drawing graphs on the board, followed by the simple equation underneath. He ignored the talking behind him as he drew the long curve and clearly marked values along the two axes.
Link looked over at the clock before turning to his students. Fifteen minutes left, more than enough time. “I’ll leave you all to find the equation you have until the end of class. If there are any questions, feel free to ask—Yes Cassian?” He pointed at a boy in the back with his hand up.
“How do we find X?”
Link resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He simply pointed at the equation on the board. “Use this equation with the corresponding values.”
“But what are the values?”
For heaven’s sake, did you not take one second to look at the fucking board? He brought the marker up a few inches and pointed at the values he’d placed on the graphic along with coordinates.
Today was Friday, and as they did on Fridays after their day ended, they went to the nearby kebab joint.
As usual, Link ordered his large wrap packed full of various spiced meats and vegetables drenched in garlic sauce and chili powder, while Zelda contented herself with a small plate of chicken over rice.
While they waited for their food, they pulled out some of their stacks of assignments from their bags and began correcting the basic quizzes they'd given out. Sure they could do it on the weekend, but they both mutually found that it was easier to do and focus on when they did it together, and so the tradition of quiz-correcting in Chez Ganondorf's Premium Kebabs became their thing.
They mostly worked in silence, occasionally throwing a sarcastic quip about something they found on a copy.
Link quickly learned that through Zelda's Robotics class, if someone didn't know the answer to a question, she always appreciated a good joke or quip rather than having a blank space in the middle of the page. That or a drawing of what might be the answer.
It was unique. He probably would have just written a question mark in the area and deducted points, but she explained that it would put her in a better mood and grade their quiz a bit better than if she was just frustrated in seeing blank areas. Her grading was far more objective, seeing as there was no precise answers due to the fact everyone worked on their own personal projects.
If anything it added to her charm. It made learning about her teaching methods more interesting, and he enjoyed some of the quips and terrible jokes that she regularly found in one of her student's quizzes.
How one connects horses to robotics, he had no clue, but this one managed it alright in a coherent way, so props to her.
Link took a bite from his wrap and savoured the strong tingles and pains from the sauce. What in the world did Ganondorf put in the sauces?
"How spicy is it today?" Zelda asked, sliding the papers over and taking her plate of rice and putting it infront of her.
"I might tear up for once."
She gasped in surprise. "Wow, I don't think we've found a place that has made you tear up yet!"
"Just kidding, I don't even have the sniffles yet. He has to try harder."
They heard a deep laughter from behind the counter. "I'll get him someday, mark my words."
"Sure you will Ganny!" Link called back before taking another heaping mouthful. "You'll probably have to kill me first."
"That can be arranged." He laughed ominously.
Zelda laughed nervously as she saw him pull a small bag of bright red dried chilis from beneath the counter. She's never seen those before. "Please don't take that as a challenge."
Link put his hand out to stop her. "No, no, let him take that as a challenge." He turned to Ganondorf and grinned. "You have my express permission to burn a hole through the lining of my stomach via chili."
Zelda dreaded how hot the food was. She was entirely unable to handle her spice. She unfondly remembered the time someone gave her a deep fried chili popper at a party where she had started crying almost instantly. A few chili flakes were fine, but just a few.
It's one of the reasons she likes this joint so much. Ganondorf's food is cheap in price, but he's heavy handed on the spice while still keeping her sensitive palate in mind. He could easily hike up his prices, but he doesn't and Zelda thinks it's an interesting business method.
"Dad! Have you seen my laptop–oh," they both turn to see a familiar face come out through the back. She's about Link's height, and he knows her all too well. "Sav'otta Mr Wilde, Ms, Bosphoramus." Riju smiles in a demonically cunning way. "I didn't know you both came here together."
Link wishes he had known his most gossipy student was the daughter of his favourite kebab joint.
"They're here every Friday, you just hide out in the back on your phone." Ganondorf says nonchalantly, completely missing the peaked interest his daughter suddenly has in the subject.
"Every Friday, you say?" She pulls out her phone and checks the time. "Fascinating."
Not fascinating. It's boring. Its two adults eating. Please don't think anything more. Link quietly prays.
He sees the girl walk around slowly, pretending terribly to check the trash cans but he knows she's looking at the parking lot. He and Zelda came in their separate cars, she was probably looking to see if both were there or not.
"Riju, leave them to their food. You're going to drive away my customers." Ganondorf scolds her lightly, pushing her back behind the counter. She smiles and runs out of sight. "She's harmless. Just a social butterfly, but she's a good kid."
"Excellent student," Link mumbles back, turning back to his wrap. It's not red enough. "Hey Ganny, pass me the hot sauce real quick," he catches the bottle that gets tossed his way and he squeezes out a generous amount of top and tosses it back, thanking him quietly and bites straight into the pain of his senses burning.
Now all his students were going to be aware that he eats lunch with Zelda on Friday afternoons. Fantastic.