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When Sidney arrived in Castletown, he hadn’t been in the best mood, and he’d had to make a conscious effort to smile and stop his eyebrows from dropping into a scowl because he refused to ever make his own emotions someone else’s problem. He was just as kind to the soldier who’d opened the door for him as he always was, even if a very, very small part of him had wanted to snap at the man for opening it so slowly when it was freezing out and he’d been soaked through to the bone.
He hadn’t slept well the night before, his worry for his father’s health having kept him awake just as much as the rain pounding against his windows and the sounds of thunder had. He had mixed opinions on storms, the rain was soothing to him even if the roaring thunder occasionally caused him to jump, bringing back memories of louder, worse things, but his poor dogs were not the biggest fans of storms of any severity and had both played their part in stopping him from falling asleep with their whining and constant shifting around. But even so, they’d also been a comfort.
He’d spent hours whispering soothing nothings to his one very anxious pet (his hunting dog who regularly took down wolves but who’d also once been spooked by a flower petal drifting down onto her head), gently petting her long face and pressing kisses to her forehead to keep her calm. The repetitive motions and her soft fur had also helped him keep himself breathing evenly, and he’d gotten close to drifting off to sleep more than once but the storm always startled him back awake, leaving him feeling unsafe and keeping his heart beating just fast enough that it was uncomfortable.
“Why can’t we be more like Bela, hm?” Sidney had asked the mass of grey and white fur pressed tightly against his side, taking a moment to try to find where his other dog was in the darkness of his room. The faint light from the almost full moon shining through his window hadn’t been enough to illuminate the far corner where she usually slept when she stayed with him, so Sidney had had no choice but to assume she’d just been there in the shadows. “Bela’s not up here shaking with us.”
His dog had lifted her head from where it’d been tucked against his arm, and she’d looked at him with something almost like annoyance in her eyes. He’d sworn sometimes that she could understand him when he spoke to her, or maybe she’d just learned reactions to his different tones.
Before he’d been able to think much harder about it, the storm had interrupted and scrambled his thoughts. The sudden boom had caused him to nearly jump out of his own skin, the noise had been loud enough to rattle his windows and it’d sent his dog fleeing under his bed.
“Květa,” he’d sighed while trying to calm his racing heart, struggling to prevent his hands from shaking. “Come back, silly. Ke mně.”
He’d felt a little pathetic for practically begging his dog to come back, he’d felt stupid for needing her to help keep the nightmares away, but it’d also concerned him that she hadn’t come when she’d been called. Both his dogs were well trained, he’d worked with them himself and after having had them for a while it was rare they disobeyed him.
“Květa!” Sidney had tried again, patting the spot next to him that had still been warm from where his dog had been laying. “Pojd’ ke mně!”
There’d been no sign of her, and when another deafening rumble had caused his heart to skip another beat, he’d found himself ducking over the edge of his mattress, practically flipping himself upside down in an attempt to find his dog. To his shock, he’d discovered Květa wasn’t the only one under there.
“Oh, Bela, not you too,” Sidney had forced himself to laugh, using it to distract himself from his fear. He’d crawled out of his bed and laid down on the floor so he could keep looking at his dogs when the blood rushing to his head had made him feel dizzy. “I guess you’re no more brave than the rest of us, huh?”
It made sense for two dogs to be nervous about storms, because they had no ability to understand what was happening, but he had no excuse for finding himself close to shaking at every loud noise. Comforting his dogs had made him feel a little less scared, even if it’d taken a stupidly long time to convince them to crawl out from under the bed so they could all get off of the cold, hard floor. And then they’d kept him up most of the night by taking up nearly the entire mattress, leaving Sidney to lay incredibly still at the edge and pray he wouldn’t fall off. It hadn’t been anywhere near a restful sleep, but he supposed he should be grateful he’d gotten any sleep at all.
The storms had continued all through the night and the next day, plaguing him his entire journey from the mountains to Castletown, and between the thunder and heavy rainfall, soaking through his clothes and leaving him freezing, Sidney had been more than a bit irritated when he’d hopped out of his horse’s saddle and gently handed her off to the stablehand he knew would take good care of her. He was so tired and cold and overwhelmed and he hadn’t wanted to come down to the city at all, his father was getting worse and worse every day and he was scared to leave him, but he still had duties to tend to. His father slowly dying didn’t excuse him from his responsibilities and as angry at how helpless over the whole situation he felt, Sidney kept it contained and had been nothing but his usual self to every person he’d passed on his way to the queen.
It’d felt rude to show up in the throne room looking like someone had just tried to drown him, but he hadn’t had much of a choice since without letting the queen know he’d arrived he’d have nowhere to stay. He had not missed how Zelda looked at him in pity as he’d shivered before her, hoping he didn’t look half as wet and pathetic as he’d felt but having a crushing suspicion that he truly looked awful.
He’d been prepared to get through his greetings to the queen as fast as possible so he could get out of his uncomfortably drenched clothes and then sleep through dinner, but the cloud of negativity hovering over his head vanished alongside half of his exhaustion when the queen had mentioned Captain Barclay was back in town. Suddenly, he didn’t care about sleeping for fourteen hours straight as much as he cared about seeing Link, and he’d found himself giving the queen his thanks before rushing to change his clothes and dry himself off so he could go find the captain.
When Sidney had reached the captain’s room to see how the man was doing, he had been expecting Link to be working at his desk, or maybe taking a nap. Zelda had mentioned that the captain had just gotten in a few hours before himself; Link was no doubt just as exhausted as he was, and he knew how much the man missed sleeping in his own bed because it was all the captain would talk about whenever he got back. Though, it wasn’t even dinner yet, so maybe Link was still awake. There was really only one way to find out.
His entire walk to his friend’s rooms, Sidney had been thinking that he’d knock and the captain would answer the door, greet him with a smile, and invite him to sit and keep him company for a while, which was pretty much as he always did. They’d talk for a little before Link had to go to dinner, and Sidney planned to take that as an opportunity to get some sleep. The captain wouldn’t kick him out of his rooms, he could say that much with confidence, and he’d practically skipped up the stairs in excitement at the thought of getting to throw his aching, frozen body on Link’s soft mattress. Maybe if he was lucky, he could get the captain to curl up under a blanket with him for a little while too.
His shitty day was going to have a nice ending. He was determined.
Having created such a solid plan for how he wanted his evening to go in his mind, Sidney was not sure what to think when he knocked on the man’s door and was answered with a frustrated sounding scream.
“Captain?” He called, conscious of the soldier standing nearby in the hall and trying to keep the alarm out of his voice as he knocked gently a second time. “Are you alright??”
“Ah! Lord Devorik!” Came a muffled shout, so quiet he wouldn’t have been able to hear it had his ear not been practically pressed to the door. “One moment!!”
Sidney frowned in concern as he turned to the soldier a few yards away, who just looked back at him and shrugged.
“He’s been making strange sounds for the better part of the last half hour, my lord,” the man informed him.
“And did you check on him?” He found himself asking, a little more harshly than he’d meant to, so he forced himself to take a deep breath and add in a much softer tone, “Is he alright?”
“He says he is, my lord,” the soldier nodded. “I’ve been asking.”
“Thank you,” Sidney sighed, feeling a bit guilty. He hadn’t fully snapped at the man, and the soldier didn’t even appear to have interpreted his initial question as rude, but Sidney was upset with himself for letting his worry and exhaustion get to him so much.
Link was not his father. There was no reason for anything to be wrong with him, and obviously the soldier stationed near his room was there to keep him safe. If there was an issue, it would’ve been sorted out the moment it started, and the captain surely wouldn’t have sounded so cheerful once he realized it was Sidney at his door if he was hurt. He didn’t need to worry about his friend so much.
Maybe Sidney should turn around and go back to the guest rooms the queen had given him so he could get some rest before seeing Link. He clearly wasn’t his best self at the moment.
Before he could even fully consider leaving, the door behind him flew open and he turned around to find a rather disheveled looking captain holding a pissed off looking cat.
“W- Where’s her sweater??” He asked in horror when he was able to tear his gaze away from the anger in Delilah’s eyes and notice her little green sweater was gone.
“It’s creature bath day,” Link told him, stepping aside and gesturing towards his room with his foot so he didn’t have to take an arm off of his squirming cat. “Come in, come in.”
Sidney was still frozen in shock. He knew the captain’s cats were hairless but somehow the sweaters they usually wore had tricked his brain into thinking that they were at part of them and staring at Delilah without it felt so, so very wrong. She didn’t just look bald, she looked like part of her was straight up missing.
Link clearing his throat startled him back to the present and he quickly stepped past him and into his rooms, not wanting to give Delilah an opportunity to squirm away.
“Hello, darling,” the captain smiled at him once Sidney closed the door. He wrapped both arms around Link when the man stepped forward, holding him tight though being conscious of the fact that there was a cat between them.
He ducked down to rest his head on the captain’s shoulder, letting out a quiet sigh and letting the residual nervousness the storm had left him with melt away in Link’s soothing presence.
“Are you alright?” The captain asked quietly, but Sidney wasn’t fully ready to talk yet so he just nodded.
He would be. He would be alright, he just needed some sleep, and being near Link never failed to comfort him.
The other man took a step back when Delilah let out a loud sneeze, looking down at her with a disapproving stare before saying something Sidney didn’t understand, though he recognized the language due to having heard the captain use it around him before.
Sorting his tunic out and brushing his still wet bangs off his forehead, he forced himself to roll his shoulders back and straighten his spine. He felt a bit stiff from having traveled all day, but hopefully the ache would fade after a bit of stretching and wouldn’t worsen and make his tomorrow miserable.
He missed what Link said to him in common when he glanced up at him, not prepared for the captain to address him instead of the cat, but before Sidney could ask him to repeat himself the other man did a double take, suddenly staring at him with wide eyes.
“What?” He asked, turning his head to look behind him in case the captain’s other cat, Rosie, was causing problems behind his back. When he turned back around and Link was still staring at him, one side of his mouth turned down as he tried not to smile, Sidney grew more confused.
“This new?” Link tapped his jaw, and Sidney found himself copying him with a frown until the realization hit him when his fingers brushed against the hair that had grown in.
“Ah…” He sighed, letting his arm flop back down against his side. “It’s… It’s been…”
‘One hell of a week’ was how he’d meant to finish that sentence since it’d been just over a week since he’d last had the energy or the time to shave properly, but he found himself trailing off because it’d been one hell of a past few months. One hell of a year, really. He was just so tired and desperately wanted everything to just slow down for a moment so he could catch his breath.
“It looks good,” the captain shrugged and Sidney felt his cheeks get warm, very grateful that Link had chosen that moment to turn and walk off towards his bathroom and couldn’t see his no doubt bright red face. “Suits you, if you plan on keeping it.”
Link was his friend, and he clearly meant that in a very friendly “Your depression beard doesn’t look hideous” kind of way because the captain didn’t want a relationship and Sidney knew that. Sidney knew that. He loved Link, he loved him with all his heart and he’d been stupid enough and brave enough to tell him that a year ago and it’d brought up some emotion he couldn’t quite name into his chest to see a look of pain on the captain’s face when he’d told him what he meant to him. He could tell his feelings weren’t one sided and Link had told him as much, saying that he felt deeply for him as well but that he wasn’t in the right place mentally for something serious, and he didn’t know if he ever would be.
Sidney loved him so much that he’d told him he’d wait for him, if he ever decided he was ready, and if that day never came then he’d made sure to tell him he was perfectly fine just being his friend. He was just grateful for the opportunity to love him at all. Truly, he was. Though that didn’t mean that some days he didn’t wish they could be more, especially when he could tell Link did love him.
But he respected the captain and he respected his boundaries. He wouldn’t push them, it felt wrong to even think about doing so and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him because he fucked up. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing him at all, to anything. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle never seeing Link again.
Oh, how terribly he’d missed him since he’d been gone.
“Sidney?”
He sucked in a sharp breath and turned to look towards the bathroom door where the captain was standing, struggling a bit to keep his hold on his cat.
“Yes, love?” The words fell out of his mouth on instinct.
“Do you want to help?” Link raised an eyebrow at him, nodding his head towards Delilah. “Wash the creatures?”
“Oh!” Sidney blinked, awkwardly cracking his knuckles and rolling up his sleeves as he walked forward. “Sure?”
The wide crooked smile he got in response was worth the world to him, and he’d do anything to keep it on Link’s face forever. “Brilliant, thank you!”
He’d thought for sure that seeing Delilah out of her sweater and the captain telling him he looked good in his miserable state would be his biggest shocks of the evening, but he’d been mistaken because when he stepped into the bathroom the last thing he’d expected to find was Rosie already in the tub, happily batting around a little wooden fish. But there she was, and she was clearly thrilled that it was bathtime, unlike her sister.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat more… Calm…? In a body of water?” He said slowly, wondering if somehow he’d curse the situation and Rosie would suddenly fling herself out of the water upon hearing him speak.
“Oh, she loves it,” Link laughed, holding Delilah tightly as he kneeled down close to the tub. “I struggle to get her out.”
“Really?” Sidney raised an eyebrow, lowering himself down carefully to sit on the floor, conscious of his aching back.
The other man hummed, sounding a little distracted as he looked around the bathroom for something, but when his cat started wriggling in his arms he forgot about it and started trying to calm her with rushed words. When she stopped struggling, Link made an attempt to lower her into the tub but the second Delilah’s paw made contact with the water she tried to jump away and starting meowing loudly at both of them.
“No, no meu bebê,” the captain whined, holding out Delilah at arm's length so she didn’t claw at his face as he carefully lowered her back into the water. “I’m not trying to drown you, you need to be clean!!”
Sidney bit his lip to stop himself from laughing, partly because he knew Link would shoot him the most hurt looking glance for finding joy in his misery, partly because he was afraid of the consequences of laughing at Delilah, and he forced himself to look at Rosie instead. The sweet little gray cat was just standing in the tub, watching as her sister squirmed in the captain’s arms.
“Good kitty,” he whispered, reaching out to scratch her chin. Rosie purred and nudged his hand with her little face, and he smiled at her as he listened to the captain attempt to sing some melody that sounded like a lullaby to calm his other cat. He couldn’t understand any of the words of it, but it seemed to work a little on Delilah and he watched Link successfully get all four of her legs into the water.
Rosie bonked her head against his knuckles when his hand stopped moving, no longer actively petting her, and he let out a small laugh before letting her have his attention again. She was a sweet cat, she’d been very friendly to him from the day he’d met her.
“Querido,” the captain called, and Sidney raised his head to look at him with a soft hum. “Pode pegar a droga do… do…” Link snapped his fingers with a frown as if that would help him think faster. “Do... do soap…?”
They stared at each other blankly for a moment, Sidney’s brain not quite realizing that it did in fact recognize the last word of what had just been said to him.
“Soap,” Link repeated slowly before letting out a small screech when Delilah suddenly started struggling again, which splashed them both with water. “Sidney, the soap! Please!”
“Right! Sorry!” He blinked hard before he looked over to where the bar was sitting up on the counter by the captain’s sink. It was just within reach, he only had to lean to the side a little to reach up and grab it, and he handed it to Link as fast as he could.
“Delilinha,” the captain scolded, struggling to keep his precious cat in place with one hand so he could take the soap from Sidney and dip it in the water before gently rubbing it against Delilah’s back. “Notice how you are fine, notice how this doesn’t hurt you.”
The cat let out a noise that sounded as if she were being tortured and Link just sighed, whacking Sidney with his wet, soapy hand until he understood what the man wanted and took the bar from him so the captain could use both hands to gently massage the soap into Delilah’s skin. The cat glared at him like it was his fault, and Sidney didn’t know why but he felt a little offended at that.
“Rosie won’t fight you if you want to help wash her,” Link told him, not daring to look away from Delilah for even a second. “Just be careful about getting soap near her face, we don’t want any getting in her eyes.”
“Of course,” he murmured, gently reaching toward the little cat who was so happily sitting in the water.
Rosie started purring when Sidney began to rub the soap against her, and he just blinked at her in shock before sparing a glance over to where Delilah was still fighting Link like her life depended on it.
“You are a very strange cat,” he breathed out a laugh, carefully rubbing the soap in in a way he hoped wasn’t irritating her skin.
The exhaustion was starting to catch up with him now that he’d been given something of a mindless task to do, and he found his eyelids drooping a little as he finished with the soap and cupped some of the water from the tub in his hands to gently pour over Rosie’s back. He couldn’t understand what the captain was saying to Delilah, but Link had worked very fast to rinse her off before catching her with a towel so he could carefully dry her off. Sidney wasn’t sure if he’d actually started falling asleep or if he’d just zoned out for a minute, but the captain’s hand on his forearm startled him and when his head snapped over to look at him, he realized Delilah was gone.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Link asked with a small frown, hazel eyes searching his face as his thumb moved back and forth in wide arcs across his skin in a comforting motion.
“I’m tired,” he sighed, letting the hand that’d been absent-mindedly pouring water over Rosie fall limp against the bottom of the tub. “Just a bit overwhelmed, in general.”
“What can I do?” The captain didn’t take his eyes off him, face still full of concern, as he carefully reached over to pull his other cat from the water so he could set her on the towel on his lap and begin to dry her off.
“I don’t know,” Sidney admitted, wishing he weren’t so tired so he could maybe think of an answer to give him. He still felt cold and wet, which was partly to do with the fact that his hand was resting in the tub still, but also his hair had yet to fully dry and he was so tired he wasn’t sure if the rain he was hearing was still going on outside or just in his head.
Link let out a small hum, opening up some bottle he had sitting near his knees and rubbing a bit of the contents of it on the freshly dried off Rosie (most likely some kind of lotion so her skin didn’t dry out, Sidney thought) before letting her run off into the main room, still missing her sweater. He’d started zoning out again, just watching the captain finish caring for his beloved cats, and was shocked when he felt something pulling his arm from the water.
“What are you doing?” He wondered, not doing much but staring at Link as the other man gently dried his arm off for him with a fresh towel he’d pulled off a rack above them.
“A few years ago, I was determined I could do everything on my own,” the captain told him quietly, continuing to pat his skin with the towel.
Sidney wasn’t at all sure what that had to do with what he’d just asked him, but something about Link’s tone and how vulnerable he sounded advised him to keep his mouth shut.
“I felt bad accepting help from others,” the man continued, leaving the towel in his lap as he reached up with one hand to carefully feel how wet Sidney’s hair still was. Deciding it was alright, he brushed his bangs out of his face for him before letting his hand rest on top of the towel. “I blamed myself for the war, so I didn’t think I deserved it. In a way, me suffering on my own through my problems was saving them more trouble to deal with that I’d caused.”
“Eleno,” he breathed, desperate to tell him that none of the war was his fault, but Link held up a finger to cut him off.
“I’m not done, darling,” the captain said with a soft smile before pushing himself up onto his feet and walking to one of the cabinets where he kept his things. “I’ve learned over the years, especially the more recent ones, that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with needing help. Nobody’s perfect, everyone is living life for the first time. It’s alright to lean on others, it’s alright to be cared for.”
Sidney frowned, even less sure now as to where Link was going with this, but he was also very curious and shifted around on the floor so he could still see the captain where he’d moved behind him.
“I like being taken care of by people I love, I've discovered,” Link told him outright, pausing his search for whatever it was he was looking for so he could look him dead in the eyes. “And I like taking care of the people I love as well.”
He wished his sleep deprived brain would’ve been able to respond to that better, with anything other than the mumbled “That’s nice, that’s good” that he let out, but at least it’d made the captain laugh for a moment.
Turning back for just a moment to pull what he’d been searching for out of the cabinet, Link turned back to him and asked, “Would you like for me to take care of you?”
In his hand, the captain was holding up a razor, and Sidney’s eyes widened in shock before he found himself struggling to hold back tears because of course Link had recognized how uncomfortable and miserable he was, and of course he was sweet enough to offer to help him.
Having mistaken Sidney’s silence for hesitation or perhaps judgement and not an inability to speak because he was so overwhelmed, the other man added very quickly, “Brand new razor, I bought it the last time I was here and then forgot to pack it with me like an absolute fucking idiot and I had to buy another one in Sky’s era and for some reason it was impossible to find one like it?? I spent three whole days trying to find-”
He started laughing at the rambling, grateful for an opportunity to try to not look like he was about to burst into tears.
“Point is,” Link sighed after having gone on for quite a bit, “it’s never been used before, I’m not plotting to kill you with an infection. You can also say no if you don’t trust me with sharp objects by your throat, I’ll only be mildly offended.”
“Thank you,” Sidney smiled at him. “And I think after five years if you’d wanted to kill me you’d have done it by now, so at this point I’d trust you with sharp objects near my throat.”
He was less worried about the captain cutting him than he was about him falling asleep and smacking his head on something or leaning into the blade, because the second Link started washing his face his brain decided it was bedtime and it became very difficult for him to keep his eyes open. The other man was incredibly gentle, as he knew he would be, and that didn’t really help either because he was talking to him in a soft voice and carefully moving his face around and it did absolutely nothing to help him stay awake. His only saving grace was that he’d yet to stop sitting on the floor, because he was sure that by now his legs would’ve given out from under him and he would’ve fallen asleep in a sad pile of a hylian on the floor.
“There you are,” Link whispered when he was finished, tucking his curls behind his ear as he stood up. “All done. Do you want me to get you clothes from your room?”
“These are clean.” He pointed at himself, barely able to stop his words from slurring together. “Just put ‘em on before I came over.”
“They don’t look very comfortable,” the captain frowned before turning to clean up his bathroom.
“I will not be conscious long enough to care,” Sidney exhaled, letting his head roll down to rest on his shoulder, very happy when he felt the fabric of his tunic on his clean shaven cheek.
He fought to stay awake just a little while longer, but his vision was starting to blur around the edges from the strain of keeping his eyes open.
Sidney wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually Link was tugging on his arm, trying to get him to his feet. He let out an annoyed huff, part of him wishing he could just stay on the floor, but he knew that if he did he’d be in horrible pain tomorrow and his tailbone was already starting to hurt.
“Sidneyyyy,” the captain whined, continuing to tug on his arm. “You have to help me, I can’t lift you.”
Forcing himself to stand up was not fun, but with Link there to help steady him, he did manage it. They shuffled awkwardly through the captain’s rooms until they reached the bed, and Sidney just let himself fall on the mattress face first.
“I ever tell you you have soft mattress?” His voice came out horribly muffled.
“Often, darling,” he heard the other man laugh as he moved to his wardrobe to get a tunic that wasn’t still damp from wrestling Delilah into the tub. “Often.”
As his body relaxed, he felt his lower back pop and he was too tired to let out a relieved groan as some of the pain went away. A good bed was life saving, and Sidney never wanted to get up from this one. Maybe it was his exhaustion talking, but he felt like he could crash for a whole twenty four hours if the gods would allow him to do so.
The mattress shifted as Link climbed into his own bed, and he barely waited for the “C’mere” invitation before he slowly inched his way over to the captain so he could wrap his arms around the man’s middle and rest his head on his chest.
He wanted to stay something, to thank Link for taking care of him and for just being there for him and for being his friend, but the second thin fingers started carding through his hair, Sidney’s brain decided it’d had enough and he fell asleep immediately.