#ive missed em so much this is an understatement i want to cry just from seeing and hearing them again pls | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

philtstone · 2 years

Note

For the touches meme: MCU ship of your choice with#8 :)

#8 -- shielding someone with their body

u can also read this on ao3 <3 to say "this prompt got away from me" would be an understatement and yet i still have the temerity to follow it up with "and there might be a part two!" lord. anyway, apologies to kaadhu because she doesn't go here at all but also she did give me the green light to be self-indulgent with this one, so.

the "Jonah Day" was inspired by a scene from Abraxas's phenomenal fic series "Just Two Guys" which was in turn quoting Anne of Green Gables. naturally i had to give it my own little spin. the fic concept itself was inspired by "Jazz Standards Vol 3" by sixes_and_sevens and "In the Woods Somewhere" by @rebellconquerer, both of whom are brilliant authors whose versions of these characters are inspiring in how much they are rich and full of feeling and complexity. i wanted to try my hand at the idea without there being an associated plot arc. hopefully i did it justice bc ive been working on this for a week and i have other Responsibilities so if i dont post it now and be at peace with its imperfections ill never get anything else done. this fic is part of this series and while technically a stand alone i guess the emotional beats of it are very much tied into their previous growing. i wanted to show that they have a process for working through things but that it's inevitably still evolving.

anyway. with that out of the way -- enjoy! (or if you're kaadhu, hopefully i can make it up to u with the star wars prompts im gonna work on next)

It’s one of those days.

It’s like everyone woke on the wrong side of some bed, and the world has not thought to slow down and accommodate them, and the headaches Sarah has started getting every few weeks, which she refuses to call pre-migraines, have settled at the back of her skull.

Also, it is raining. Badly.

Cassius used to call ‘em Jonah Days. Only person had it worse in the world, he’d say, was probably Jonah and his whale.

Sarah does not have a whale, but she does have that headache, and has spent all day tracking down a mistake on a license she ordered three weeks ago and trying to make up for the work she missed last week when AJ had the stomach flu and had to spend an afternoon at the hospital. It had just been her at home; Rhodes had called on Sam’s behalf, and Bucky had had to fly out on short notice, something half classified with a tension undercutting it that left Sarah’s tongue feeling dry. He got back in yesterday. Yesterday was not as much of a misery as today but still dragged itself out, and was prolonged enough that they only had time for a brief kiss hello and the curt acknowledgement that Sam was alright. Whatever had happened, Bucky was not happy about it. She’d noticed, of course. His face was drawn, and everything he said came out like the second half was being held as a careful package at the back of his throat. Sarah, distracted by life, had not thought about it too hard. On the rare occasion the rarer mission (getting rarer still) is genuinely awful, she has realized he’ll always find a way to call her. Sometimes, as a reassurance for her. Other times, for his own sanity. Once he called barely three hours after he left, like by some prescient intuition he knew she’d be sitting at the kitchen table on the verge of a panic (another one of those Days). Another time, in the middle of the dairy aisle at Wal-Mart, she picked up the phone to him crying.

Nothing like that happened this time. He’d said I’m fine, quietly, into her temple, and Sarah had been too tired to try to coax anything else out of him, so she let it be.

When she gets home, today – The Jonah Day – stomping into the kitchen with as much purpose as she can muster, Bucky is sitting at the kitchen table, something pale and unkempt about his face, and nursing an empty mug of tea.

She knows it’s tea because of the glittery little tag that’s hanging from the edge of the mug. In truth this should be her first red flag: there’s only one kind of tea he drinks, and a rare handful of occasions he drinks it on. She’s never had a great love for honeybush, but the stuff Ayo’s wife Aneka sends is nice-smelling and strong enough to be medicinal. Sarah’s not in any mood to be catching flags today, red or otherwise. She shuffles in and wonders where they’ve put the ibuprofen and nearly steps on the cat, who scratches her foot in her yowly attempt to get away from Sarah’s sandal.

“Shit –” Her elbow slams into the cabinet as she startles – “Argh! Out of the kitchen, Alpine – Cass! What’d I tell you about getting these dishes done after school? Do I look like a dishwashing service to you?”

That had been the deal. There is an abstract part of her that knows Cass is working on a science project and an even more abstract part of her that knows that, in the regular routine that’s emerged, Bucky would have reminded him.

Clearly he has not. Sarah is too tired to process why that might be. Maybe he forgot. She doesn’t think he got much sleep last night, which isn’t exactly uncommon. She remembers waking up to an empty bed and a rumpled sleeping bag on the bedroom floor. She’d nearly tripped over that, too.

Could be that’s what got the whole day going.

“Can you get Cass?” Sarah asks, only half-looking at Bucky. She walks through the remainder of the kitchen and peers into the coffee pot to see if there are any dregs left from the morning. The rainstorm outside seems to have turned into a thunderstorm; Sarah can hear its low rumblings. Are there leftovers in the fridge? No. And no one has bothered to think of dinner, either. She swallows back the urge to curse on her next prolonged inhale, the delay in reply rubbing her already edgy nerves wrong for no reason. “Bucky.”

“Hm? Oh.” In a side glance, she can see him shift his elbows on the table, rub at his eyes and nod. “Yeah, um. Yeah, I’ll get him. Let me put this in the sink.”

Another rumble. If the power goes out she thinks she might scream.

Speaking of the sink: she tosses the thermoses the boys left on the kitchen counter into it with a dull clang and wonders if she has time to take a shower. It doesn’t occur to her that maybe she will feel better if she takes a moment to breathe and perhaps ask Bucky for a hug – Sarah’s habits of self-reliance started well before her first marriage, even – but anyway, she feels disgusting. She smells like sweat and fish and she wants to sleep for ten years and cry at once. She’s worried if he gets too close she’ll cringe, or snap, or something foolish. Still. He has to enter her space to rinse the mug out. She tries not to look at him lest the crying overtake her and attempts to source a granola bar to maybe take the edge off her headache.

Overloud footsteps thunder abruptly down the stairs. Suddenly, Cass is barreling in, an overdue apology loud on his tongue. This happens a half second before his hip knocks into one of the kitchen chairs, which drags, scrapes loudly, and pinches an unassuming Alpine’s tail between its leg and the table’s.

Alpine shrieks.

“CASS!” Sarah yells, forgetting herself.

“I’m sorry!” yelps Cass immediately, wide-eyed and penitent.

“It was an accident,” Bucky says quickly. He’s straightened beside her, and his voice has something strained under the placating instinct, “it’ll be fine –”

One free hand comes up in front of him in a gesture she knows very well. “For the love of God!” Sarah yells. “No, it was not! I have told you a million times, Cassius Wilson –” Bucky’s hand is too close to her. She grabs it, to bat it away, shove it back towards him. Alpine is still yowling holy vengeance. Cass is apologizing more loudly now, and she does not notice Bucky’s shoulders tensing, and her hand connects with his a split second before the rumbling beginnings of thunder turn into a full blown clap outside.

With the piercing pop of breaking ceramic the mug in his hand explodes, spraying its pieces all over the floor. Sarah’s mouth lets out a startled little cry and she does not realize why that is until she looks down, heart in her throat, and realizes his other hand has shot out and grabbed her wrist.

A reflex, probably. Her tendons are pinching but Sarah knows this kind of thing can spook anyone on a good day. And she’d been yelling so loudly, right in his ear.

“Sorry!” says Cass again, reedy with the fright he gave himself, the suddenness, the mundane violence of a cup breaking and the spring storm. His voice is thinned out with the upshooting squeak of pre-teen concern and in a moment Sarah’s anger fizzles. She can hear the rain lashing at the windows.

“It’s alright,” she says, parroting Bucky’s earlier words, “it’s just a mug.”

Bucky is still holding her wrist. The angle is awkward – Sarah is too close to him and too far away from him at once and her forearm is bent low, towards the kitchen counter. The metal pads of his fingers dig into her bones, pushing them together, and when she comes to gently tug away, she can’t move it an inch. “Ow,” comes out of her mouth, muttered and mostly surprised, before she can stop it.

“Alpine!” she hears Cass say. “No, you have to get on the table or your feet’ll get hurt –”

Poor Alpine has not had a moment of peace since Sarah entered the kitchen. She’s never loved thunderstorms and beyond her own pinched tail and trodden foot the tiny cat is tense and staring at Bucky and Sarah with wide, alert, too-knowing eyes. Sarah cannot process this. She is looking at Bucky’s face. Every line of his body is iron hewn, pupils large and dilated, lips too red and parted where he is breathing heavily. He’s staring at the floor, and the broken ceramic, but there suddenly isn’t a doubt in Sarah’s mind that he isn’t seeing jack shit.

“B,” she tries. “You okay?”

Nothing. His grip on her arm is so tight that she’s started to feel it in her elbow. She can see blood trickling down his right hand thumb where she realizes the broken ceramic cut into his palm; he didn’t startle and drop it, then.

“Mom?” Cass has noticed them. “Uncle Bucky?”

“James,” Sarah says, as steadily as she can. “Let go, please.”

She bites her tongue just before the rest of the sentence comes out; she would not, in a million years, in any lifetime, say You’re hurting me when Cass is still in the room.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“We all just had a fright,” Sarah says, trying to subtly shift her shoulder. “Cass, put your running shoes on. Then go to the supply closet upstairs and grab the hand vacuum and dustpan.”

“But –”

“Tell AJ not to come down ‘til we’ve cleaned the broke mug. We don’t get it clean soon Alpine might hurt herself.”

This is motivation enough to manage him. She thinks for Cass this must still be one of those momentary incursions of chaos into routine that are sprinkled throughout her own childhood. She watches her son nod rapidly out of the corner of her eye, and then he scrambles away and back up the stairs.

“James,” Sarah says, once he is out of earshot. “I need you to hear me. We’re in the kitchen. You broke a mug by accident. There’s a rainstorm outside. Please let go, you’re hurting my arm.”

He is not entirely frozen because she can see the minute trembles in his chest and chin and bloodied right hand. It’s not a lot, but it’s started dripping onto the floor.

“James. Bucky!”

The pressure on her wrist is starting to edge past uncomfortable and into a territory Sarah doesn’t want to think about. She doesn’t think he’s squeezing any harder, only the shock has started to fade, and she is really feeling it now. It might even bruise. Not badly – Sarah knows her own body well enough to guess – but enough that the idea makes her sick to her stomach. She can see the dull brown of the last drops of tea from the mug, splattered onto the pale grey of his indoor t-shirt. Those will stain for sure, she thinks. Her head pounds. Her brain feels like scrambled eggs. A tiny shard of ceramic bites into her pinky toe, between her sandal straps, and she can hear AJ’s inquiring voice from upstairs, asking loudly what happened. Knowing her children he will be down in a moment and heedless of any possible danger, broken mug related or otherwise.

“Baby,” she says, “forgive me.”

She reaches forward with her free hand and fits her thumb and forefinger into the groove beneath where his rotator cuff should be. Sarah presses as hard as she can. Like a flipped switch the grip on her hand releases and Sarah has to bite back another curse when the frozen deadweight of the vibranium prosthetic freefalls and crashes directly onto the ground, just barely missing her shin.

She is not in any place to understand what the effect must be outside of a shock, but immediately Bucky makes a strangled noise of surprise and slumps back against her cluttered kitchen counter with the imbalanced movements of some leggy baby animal.

Only, for perhaps the first time, Sarah is acutely aware of how large he is, how ungainly and imposing all that muscle can be.

“Be careful, the mug –!” she hears herself yell anyway, entirely instinct.

“The mug,” Bucky repeats, slurred, blinking. His right hand reaches up to scrabble at the thin air to his left. She can see the fumbling movement of his wrist, the way his body leans. His eyes meet hers, wide and startled and questioning. He’s seeing her. She didn’t think it would make such a difference, but she nearly cries. The sound crawls up her esophagus but does not quite make it out.

“Sarah?” he asks, voice small.

Jesus Lord, Sarah thinks. The whole thing happened so fast – nothing long or drawn out about it. Hell, she could pretend it didn’t happen at all. He stares at her, and then the shattered mug on the floor, and then his arm, deadened and inert. Finally his eyes land on her wrist, which she has cradled instinctively in her other hand, and is rubbing. Dread floods into his expression.

“It’s alright,” Sarah says, “It’s fine, you got spooked, we’ll just –”

She tries to reach for him, working both with and against her own instincts.

“No,” he chokes.

She can see him beginning to tremble.

“James –”

“No!” The sheer panic in his voice does not help her own at all, “Stay – wait, don’t, please –” He pulls away from her and his foot nudges one of the larger mug pieces with a loud scraping clink. Between this and his sudden movement Sarah flinches.

For a long moment, Bucky gapes at her.

Then, slowly, he sinks down to the floor. The tremble in his body becomes more visible. His remaining arm comes up to wrap around the crown of his head, half-covering his face. His knees are pulled up to his chest, like he is trying to make himself as small as possible in front of her. You’re gonna get ceramic in your jeans, Sarah wants to say. The wreckage of the mug spreads out around him.

“Mom?” calls Cass’s voice from the stairs, followed by footsteps. “We got the vacuum! Should I –”

“Stay outside the kitchen, Cass.” It’s immediate – hoarse-voiced but louder and firmer than Sarah thought him capable of right now. His face is still covered. “Too many small pieces on the floor, I’ll clean it up myself. You too, AJ.”

Their footsteps stall. “Okay!” she hears. Sarah sways in place.

“Sarah,” he says, into his single arm. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Oh, God.”

It’s alright, Sarah wants to say. She managed it earlier, didn’t she? Her wrist is more or less fine now. Maybe a bit tender, but nothing that couldn’t have happened a million other ways.

The words don’t come out. Instead, to her horror, a small sound like a sob does.

It’s alright, she urges herself. Just say it.

“I love you,” is what she says instead. She leaves the kitchen to fetch the dustpan. It’s only once she’s hit the laundry room and locked the door behind her that she lets herself begin to cry.

By bedtime, Sarah’s wrist is properly tender. The kitchen has long since been cleaned. In between her stint in the laundry and AJ’s innocent declaration that she needed a shower, Bucky went ahead and ordered them pizza for dinner, so that was one more thing she didn’t have to think about too. No one put the boys to bed properly but when she checked in they had managed alright themselves. When she enters the bedroom the storm outside has dulled to a simple drizzle and her chest floods with relief. He’s there. And not in the sleeping bag, either. He’s on their bed, curled up to face the wall, and his face is pale.

Sarah ignores her bathroom routine and crawls onto the bed beside him. He hasn’t re-attached his arm. She saw it in the den, earlier, tucked away behind the cushions on the daybed he used to use.

She takes a deep breath. She’s spent most of the evening trying to detangle between her residual emotions from the Jonah Day and the very real thing that happened downstairs. She sat in the tub for twenty minutes thinking about what words she wanted to use.

Bucky beats her to it.

“Has it,” he starts, sounding miserable. “Your -- your arm.”

Sarah doesn’t want to lie. “It’s ...”

“Jesus,” he whispers, this awful undertone of disgust weighing it down into the bed.

“I was going to say it probably won’t even bruise.”

Bucky doesn’t reply. She wonders if he hasn’t reached out to check the wrist himself because he’s scared of himself, or if he’s scared she will be.

“I’m sorry for not being more careful earlier,” Sarah says after a long moment, looking at her toes. They’re in desperate need of a pedicure. “For – yelling. Being rough. I should have been more aware of my surroundings.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she hears, delivered into the bedspread.

They have two spreads on this bed. One Sarah has had for always – it’s quilted, with small squares of yellow and blue, and small stitched flowers that Sarah’s grandmother said were meant to bring a sense of safety into a bedroom. The other is red – burgundy pattern bursts, even a bit of purple. The material is thicker-woven and heavier and very new, and bought after much careful consideration (and her own encouragement that he get something he liked) from one of Bucky’s favourite vendors a few months ago. She knows it is called a kitenge and loves that it is on her bed.

“B,” Sarah says finally. “If I’m an adult I’m responsible for how I behave when I know certain things about others. You have to –” she fists her hands into the sheets, searches for the right thing beneath the tension in her throat, “respect that. Respect me by acknowledging that.”

There’s a long moment of quiet.

“Thank you for apologizing,” Bucky says softly. Then, after another long pause, “I’m sorry for not telling you how – how bad I was feeling. And for scaring you after. And for ... fuck. Sarah. I’m so sorry.”

Sarah swallows around her dry tongue.

“I know. You still feeling rough?”

“A little. My head got really loud and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Because of last week’s thing.”

Sarah doesn’t like calling them missions. Sam says she doesn’t want to give ‘em the dignity of a proper name lest they end up having power over her life.

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“Did you call –”

She can’t see his face but she can perfectly imagine the way his eyes scrunch shut on a frown. “Didn’t realize it was bad until it was … bad. Thought I could work through it yesterday. With – routines.”

“The tea,” Sarah realizes. Simultaneously she feels heartbreak and a keen sense of frustration. She should have noticed, she thinks. Then again, the plain reality is that she will have her own bad days, and she is only human. Also, she very much knows the desire to prove you haven’t mistaken your newfound ability to control. Still, still, still –

“Just, since then,” she starts.

“I called Dr. Naimi while you were in the shower,” he says quietly.

It’s been about a month with her, so Sarah would have been ready to understand if he didn’t at all. Just barely, but ready. Sarah likes Dr. Naimi and Dr. Naimi likes Sarah. Trauma specialist is an added perk of her proximity to them, and Sarah’s cheerful memories of LSU.

Sarah lets out a long exhale through her mouth. She can see his right hand where it’s curled up by his stomach. He’s put bandaids over the cuts from the ceramic. She knows he doesn’t need them – those cuts would’ve self-sealed within fifteen minutes – so she is left wondering if the decision was made for the boys’ sake, or maybe hers, or even his own. Easy not to think about something if the evidence is covered up and away. Sarah rubs at her eyes, which are dry and gritty from her earlier cry.

In a sense she’s stalling the instinct to reach out to him because the back of her brain is still working through the newer, more temporary instinct that’s appeared. But she does need to change. Bucky is already in his sleep clothes, faded grey sweatpants that he’s wearing holes into and that garishly orange t-shirt memorializing Cass’s first grade Lion King play. Sarah leaves the bed. She brushes her teeth, wraps up her hair, wipes her face. She comes back into the bedroom and shimmies out of her jeans, then bypasses her usual tank top for the navy blue t-shirt folded neatly at the top of his drawer. The shoulders hit halfway down her biceps. She crawls back onto the bed, in front of him this time.

Bucky’s still wide awake.

“You gonna stay awake all night?” she asks.

“No.”

“Promise?”

She watches him touch his tongue to his bottom lip, which is looking raw, like he’s been doing that all night. He trembles on the inhale. “I’m better,” he repeats. “I’ll do some – um, those exercises before bed. Forgot to do ‘em last night, I was real tired I guess.”

This bedroom’s good for those – it’s got so much stuff in it, and sentimental stuff too, he can go through picking out things he can see and what they’re made of and how they feel to touch and lull himself to sleep like that. Sometimes he does it teasingly and lists what she is wearing while he takes it off.

His eyes have cast down, a very deliberate avoidance of hers. Swallowing against her own mind she scootches forward and lies down in front of him. Then she pulls at his shoulder – firm, but with gentle hands.

“Sarah,” muffled, into the pillow.

“Need you to hold me.”

“You don’t have to –”

“For me. For me, James.”

He relents, balancing on the ball of his empty shoulder, and smoothes his free hand over her arm and around her back to pull her towards him. His fingers, which are so familiar to her by now, splay open between her shoulder blades. They don't tremble, but they’re very careful. Sarah has to work hard not to notice. Still, he ends up half covering her. She lets her tender wrist lay gingerly against her collarbone in the hollow between their chests and breathes in and out in long steadying breaths. Where their bodies touch (at her hip, her cheek, where his shoulder digs into her breast) the pressure is just minutely too much but enough for Sarah’s purposes. She winds one arm around him, tangles their legs together, closes her eyes, and wills herself through her pounding heart to re-memorize the feeling: the deep-seated thing within herself that’s come to associate his body touching hers with safety and security.

Sarah doesn’t newly believe herself a fool. Reality coexists with her convictions and they’ll just have to work their way through it. The blankets beneath them are contrasting in their fabrics and soft against the bare skin of Sarah’s neck.

“I love you,” Bucky whispers. It’s said in the same way she said it earlier. Sarah nods, and holds him tighter.

#touches prompt meme #marvel #sarahbucky #sarah wilson #bucky barnes #fatws #sarah and bucky #tfatws #fleur de louve #sarah x bucky #my writing #lord this got long #and the new tumblr ask formating ... bad #ALMOST 1 FULL YEAR BABY

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liv-andletdie · 6 years

Text

Puppy Love

Author: liv-andletdie Rating: Teen and up Pairing: TP Zelink Modern AU Notes: Link is a vet at Ordon Veterinary surgery. Zelda is an Aristocrat with a dog who is sick… surprisingly often. Though nothing seems to be wrong with the poor thing.

Available on Ao3

Chapter 6: The Heart to Heart

It had been six days, eighteen hours, thirty seven minutes, twenty six seconds and counting since Zelda had left Ordon. Not that Link was keeping track or anything.

In those six days Link had thrown himself into his work. He’d visited the ranch several times to check on the newborn kids, fought with a particularly fractious cat in order to insert an IV catheter, reluctantly listened to a man’s own heartbeat when he informed him that his dog had a similar heart murmur, consoled a woman who was upset that her duck couldn’t swim (despite the fact that it was a cucco and perfectly healthy), and solved the mystery of one feline friend’s disappearing waste (turns out it was relieving itself in the garage). To say he was exhausted would be an understatement. His only comfort was that, at the end of the day, he could collapse in his bed and sleep until dawn.

So it was surprising that he had given that up in favour of peeling potatoes in Rusl’s kitchen.

To be fair, it wasn’t as if he could just leave. It was a longstanding tradition. Every other week he, Rusl, and Ilia would meet up and have a nice home cooked meal together. This time it was the turn of the elder man to host, and for some reason he had requested that Link be charge of potatoes. It was his job to peel and slice the root vegetables incredibly thin, Ilia had been given the easier job of working with the cucco, and Rusl had the hardest job of all, keeping his rambunctious toddler out of the kitchen while his eleven year old son focused on homework.

Link couldn’t say that he envied him. He envied Ilia. The cucco was far more complicated to prepare than the “dauphinoise potatoes” Uli had requested. All he had to do was cut and peel potatoes, tasks which required very little concentration, giving his mind ample time to fixate on a certain brunette and her stunning blue eyes.

It had been six days, eighteen hours, forty five minutes, twelve seconds and counting since she’d left Ordon, and Link could still hear her parting words, sharp in their formality, cutting through him like a knife.

Goodbye, Doctor Wolfe

“Uhh, Link?”

Ilia’s soft voice pulled him from his reverie. He turned quickly to face her, blue eyes catching on emerald green. Mischief seemed to burrow in the corner of her lips as she held back a giggle. “I think that potato is fully peeled, don’t you?”

Fighting back the slight confusion at her words, he looked down to the vegetable in his hands. There was a large sloping dent in the side where he’d been relentlessly going over it with the peeler, Potato shavings were all over the cutting board in front of him, and starch coated his fingers and palms. Dropping the peeler on the countertop and the potato in a pile with the others, he turned back to face Ilia.

“Here,” she sighed, handing him a clean kitchen towel from the drawer. He nodded sheepishly in thanks, wiping his hands on the rough towelling before returning to his work. He could hear Ilia moving around behind him, her gentle footsteps echoing like thunder in the silent room. She seemed… frustrated about something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He was about to ask her what her issue was when she landed against the countertop beside him.

“You’re going real slow,” She sighed, an overdramatic tone curling over her breath. He fought back his own smile at her act.

“Don’t you got a cucco you need to prepare or something?”

“Cucco’s all done. I’m just waiting on you and your potatoes.”

“Well,” Link gestured lamely to the cutlery drawer behind him. “Get a knife and start cutting ‘em up if I’m so slow.”

Ilia pushed herself away from the counter, the sound of forks and spoons clattering against each other filling the air in her absence. Link knew she was trying to make as much noise as she could. He was always the more quiet of the two, prefering to let Ilia do most of the talking, but even he knew that he’d been a little quieter than normal recently. Ilia appeared beside him once more. She gave him a slight nudge with her elbow, wordlessly asking him to move along a little before beginning her new task.

The two continued to work silently, the quiet hanging heavy in the air. Beside him he could sense Ilia getting more and more wound up, tension seeping into her shoulders, her back going ramrod straight. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, he could see her chew on her lip before dropping her knife.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s bothering you or do I have to play a guessing game to find out?” She blurted, cheeks immediately going red in a blush. Link felt himself stop in his own task, the peeler falling from his hand to clatter against the counter.

“What?” he breathed. “Ilia... I’m not… There’s nothing-” She cut him off with a raised hand, her shoulders dropping. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

“You’ve been acting off all week,” She started. “You’ve been quiet, more so than usual. You’ve been throwing yourself into your work, sleeping as soon as you get home.” She seemed to get smaller, her body folding in on itself as she lost the strength to stand. “It ain’t healthy Link. I’m just… I’d understand if you don’t want me prying into your business, but… I’m worried about you. What is it? What’s going on?”

“Ilia it’s… I’m fine”

He wasn’t fine. He was the furthest from fine that he’d ever been, and that was saying something. He was distinctly “Not Fine”. If you were to look up the definition of the word “Fine” in the dictionary you would find, written below in small print, “The very opposite of Doctor Link Wolfe”. It had been a week and he was still wallowing in his sorrows! Sorrows that he wasn’t even sure he deserved to wallow in. So what! He wanted to cry, You didn’t get to take Zelda out for coffee boo hoo. It’s not like she would have wanted to go out with you anyway.

“I’m not fine.”

“I gathered.” Ilia rested a hand against his shoulder, her thumb brushing against his collar bone. She looked ready to launch into a motivational speech, to start telling him that everything was going to be alright, that happiness was just around the corner, and whatever other saccharine phrases she could think of. But instead she simply squeezed his shoulder and fixed him with a sympathetic yet knowing look. “Zelda?”

“That’s so crazy, how did you guess?” He snarked hearing Ilia laugh beside him.

“Well, short of you doodling her name in your notebook, you’ve been sighing like a school kid with a crush for weeks.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her side. “Everyone was waiting on you to ask her out. What happened with that?”

“I didn’t ask her out,” He muttered, eyes fixing on the potatoes in front of him. They still needed slicing.

“You didn’t? what?” Ilia gasped, the sound far too loud for his sensitive ears. “Why not?”

“Because, Ilia,” He pulled away from her, craning his head back to try and protect what was left of his hearing. “I never got the chance to! And now I probably never will.”

Ilia put her hands on her hips, fixing him with a confused look. A manicured eyebrow raised slightly as she tilted her head to the side. “I thought you had plenty of chances,” She said, words slow as if she was trying to figure out a difficult puzzle. “You were at her house often enough.”

“That’s different,” he defended, roughly picking up the vegetable he’d abandoned. “I couldn’t ask her out when I was at work. What if she’d said no? Then the whole thing would have been awkward, not to mention creepy.”

“How would it have been creepy?” Ilia asked, trying to focus on her own potatoes.

“It just would have been! Like… imagine you had a dog and you loved it with all your heart. Then you thought the dog got sick and you called the vet and they just flirted with you and asked you out! It’d be weird,” Link roughly peeled the potato in his hand, slamming it down on the chopping board when he was done.

Ilia was silent for a moment, the only sound was the gentle slicing of potatoes. Link was convinced that she’d dropped it, that she was done questioning him about his failed attempts at romance with Zelda Freaking Harkinian, and that she was happy to just focus on the, frankly ridiculous, Dauphinoise potatoes. And then she spoke, her voice soft and full of an innocent and genuine curiosity.

“What about the park?”

Link fought back a cringe. The park. Oh man, the park. He’d not expected to run into Zelda when he’d gone for a walk. But then Naru found him and he couldn’t just ignore her! What kind of vet would he be if he didn’t return the husky back to her owner? And then Zelda had let him stay and she’d talked to him and he’d had a really, really great time. He’d been so close to asking her out and then…

“What about the park?” He tried not to sound angry as he reached for a knife to help Ilia with her potato slicing.

“Well, that would have been a great time to ask her out,” She explained, her eyes not straying from the food in her hand. “You weren’t technically on duty so it wouldn’t have been…creepy.”

Link brought the knife down on the potato with a little more force than was necessary. The park would have been the perfect place to ask her out, or at least get her number. There was no threat of imminent danger, no awkward work talk, just two adults and a husky in the sunshine. Two, single, adults. Two adults who weren’t in romantic relationships and- why didn’t he just ask her out?!

“I was going to,” he defended, hitting the knife against the chopping board. “Then someone called me about a Goat and I had to leave.”

Ilia at least had the grace to look sheepish. “It’s not my fault! How was I supposed to know you were busy wooing Miss Harkinian?” she reached for a new potato, stifling the giggle that threatened to rise as Link’s ears turned scarlet. “You still had enough time to ask for her number before you left.”

Enough time, Link decided, was a matter of situation. It was relative. If you had ten minutes you had “enough time” to make instant ramen, but you didn’t have “enough time” to eat it. And that’s not even taking into account the amount of time needed to boil the water or get the cutlery out. Even if the packet says “ten minutes” it takes a lot longer than that to accomplish the task to a high standard. Do you have time to make and eat half cooked noodles in ten minutes? Yes, but why would you?

He would admit that, theoretically, he had had “enough time” to ask Zelda for her phone number before he left. It would have been easy to say, “Hey let me get them digits real quick,” before running off, but would it have been successful? No one wants to eat half cooked ramen, and no one wants to get rejected when asking for someone’s number (especially if that person is Zelda Harkinian!) He may have had “enough time” to ask but would he have had “enough time” to get a positive answer?

His head hurt.

Scooping up the potato slices into a bowl, he pointedly refused to look at Ilia. She was waiting for his response, for him to either agree or disagree with her. Link wondered if he had “enough time” to get her to drop the conversation before Rusl came back.

“I didn’t ask for her number,” he muttered, taking his chopping board over to the sink to rinse it. “She asked for mine.”

It probably wasn’t the best thing to say to get Ilia to drop the conversation, but he wasn’t going to deny that it was worth it to hear her excited cry of “NO WAY! REALLY?!” ring out through the kitchen.

“Don’t get too excited,” he warned grabbing the kitchen towel to dry his hands off. “She only wanted my work number. Y’'know, for emergencies”

Ilia seemed to deflate at his words, shoulders sagging as she let out a mournful sigh. He wasn’t so sure what she had to be upset about, he was the one who almost made a fool of himself in front of the girl he liked (the girl he liked, goodness how childish could he sound?)

“I guess that makes sense,” Ilia muttered to herself as she lined a gratin dish with the potato slices. Link took a step back to let her work, she was better at organising things neatly than he’d ever be, and while the dish would probably taste the same no matter what he still didn’t want to serve Uli and Rusl ugly looking food. “She’s a busy lady, makes sense she’d want to just be able to call up when somethings wrong and…” She froze, potato in hand. Link could see her eyes flicker as she tried to work something out, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “That ain’t right.”

“What ain’t right?” he asked, leaning against the counter near the sink. Ilia seemed to be still working it out, potatoes and seasoning left abandoned in front of her.

“Well,” she started. “You said she asked for your work number right?”

“Right”

“Okay,” Ilia turned, leaning against the counter to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth set in a determined frown. “Did she know that you don’t have a personalised work number? That you just use the surgery’s number?”

Link shrugged. How was he supposed to know what Zelda knew and what she didn’t know? It wasn’t like he’d interrogated her at the park for information or anything. ”I guess” was the best answer he could come up with. “I mean… if she’s called the surgery before, then she’s seen the website and knows I just use the number on there… why are you looking at me like that?”

Ilia’s grin had returned. A marvelous, wonderful, grin that Link was normally in love with… when it wasn’t directed at him. She looked like she was about to burst into laughter or a childish “I told you so” song at the first chance she got. It scared him.

“Say that last part again,” She prompted pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

“If she’s called the surgery before then she’s… oh,” realization hit him like a pile of bricks, knocking him down and pinning him to the kitchen floor. Zelda’s called the surgery before, she has the number. She wasn’t asking for my work number was she? “Oh shit.”

Link heard a loud gasp almost drowned out by the sound of an eleven year old giggling. Turning sharply he saw Rusl enter the room, a disapproving look on his face as he carried his son over his shoulder. Colin, for his part, was laughing so loud that his cheeks had gone pink.

“Language,” he chided, dropping Colin to the floor “we got little ones in the house, Link”

“I’m sorry,” Link muttered, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. Ilia stifled her own laughter behind her palm, ignoring the annoyed look Link shot her way as she went back to work on layering the potatoes in the dish. “I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s alright,” Rusl sighed, moving to put the cucco in the oven. “Just watch out next time.” He clapped Link on the shoulder, giving him a quick squeeze as he moved around him to the cutlery drawer. “How are those potatoes coming?”

“Great, thanks to me,” Ilia smirked, walking over to the fridge to get the cream. Link stuck his tongue out at her as she went past.

“I had it,” He pouted. “I’d have been done by now if it wasn’t for you”

“You’d still be peeling the same potato if it wasn’t for me,” She said as she slammed the door to fridge shut. Rusl gave her a warning look as he handed the cutlery to Colin. “He was too busy pining over his crush,” she explained unable to hold back the shit eating grin that curled over her lips.

“Link’s got a crush?!” Colin exclaimed, pausing in his task of laying the table. His pale blue eyes lit up with mischief and Link felt his blood run cold at the sight. Middle Schoolers, he thought watching Colin’s grin grow with every passing second. They can smell weakness.

“I don’t have a crush!” He lied, feeling like a petulant child as he crossed his arms in a huff. Beside him Rusl let out a bellowing laugh, a hand coming around to hit him squarely between the shoulderblades.

“Who is she, son?” He asked through his chuckles.

“No one!” Link cried “There isn’t anyone...I don’t… I’m not-”

“It’s Miss Harkinian!” Ilia piped up, a musical giggle leaving her lips. Link endured another rough shoulder pat from Rusl. Colin looked confused as he continued setting the table. “She asked for his number,” Ilia continued practically bouncing on her heels. “Tell him what happened, Link”

Link’s blood turned to ice at her words, freezing solid in his veins. Rusl was looking at him expectantly, the once comforting hand on his back now pushing him head first into an awkward situation. He wanted to avoid this, wanted to run and hide but he was sure that the three of them would find him in a heartbeat.

“What happened, Link?” Rusl asked giving him another less than gentle pat to his spine.

Link looked around the room, eyes darting from Ilia to Rusl to Colin. Each of them stared back at him, waiting for him to say something, anything! They reminded him of a pack of wolves on the hunt. Bloodthirsty and ruthless.

“I...I gave...She asked…” He felt his throat dry up, his palms getting sweaty as he clenched his fists. This wasn’t going to be fun, but it would be better to bite the bullet now… wouldn’t it?

“I wanna preface this by saying that she asked for my number in case of an emergency! So before y’all try to make fun of me, just know that I was only doing what she asked.” He swallowed down the lump in his throat, rolling his shoulders back and bracing himself for the incoming onslaught of teasing. “I gave her my business card.”

“Well,” Rusl said, drawing out the word agonisingly slowly. A smirk hid in the corner of his lips, just barely visible as he spoke. “That seems like the right thing to do if she’s asking for your professional number.” The smirk grew larger, the light of it shining in his eyes. “Was she asking for your professional number?”

There it is, Link thought, The question I’ve been asking myself for the past week.

“Yes,” He replied automatically, fixing his gaze on the kitchen floor, his eyes trailing over the grooves between the tiles. It really needed to be swept, perhaps he should do that after dinner to save Uli a job.

“Are you sure?” Colin piped up. He’d seated himself at the head of the table, elbows resting on either side of his plate. He looked innocent enough, all pale blonde hair and baby blue eyes, his chin resting on his open palms while he kicked his legs below the table. A cunning facade, no doubt. But Link knew too much, he’d grown up with him.

“I’m… I’m pretty sure, Colin,” he sighed. He wasn’t sure, far from it. He kept replaying the moment in his head over and over. She’d paused. Zelda had definitely paused. She’d left a space between asking for his number and clarifying that it would only be used in an emergency… had she?… had he?... No. No, it couldn’t be.

“Are you sure you’re sure?” Colin said, matching his father’s smirk. It was a look Link had seen fairly often in the past eleven years. Gotcha.

“Miss Harkinian’s called the surgery before,” Ilia sounded wistful as she carried the potatoes over to the oven. “That’s the one thing that’s confusing me”

“Oh yeah,” Rusl crooned, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “That is confusing.”

Link could feel his father figure stare at him, the smirk no longer hidden as it curled proudly over his lips. “I wonder why she’d need a number she already has?... unless-”

“Alright, I get it!” Link cut in, already exhausted from repeating the conversation with Zelda over and over again in his own head. “I messed up, I had a chance, maybe, and I blew it.”

It hurt to admit it outloud. He’d thought it countless time over the past week, but he’s always followed it up with, It’s not like she was interested in me anyway. It hadn’t made him feel better about the situation but it certainly hadn’t made him feel worse.

But this! The idea that she liked him back, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and that he blew it for the both of them. Well, that stung.

Rusl pulled him into a hug, resting his chin on the crown of Link’s head. “You didn’t mess it up” he said, the smirk in his voice replaced with a genuine, if bittersweet, smile. “There’s always a chance you’ll see her again.”

Now that would be something, Link thought as he let himself get pulled into the embrace. A heavy sigh escaping him as he rested his forehead on Rusl’s shoulder. “Shiiiit” a sardonic laugh passed his lips. “There’s always a chance”

“Come on what did I say?” Rusl sighed, his own laugh bubbling up. “Little ears are present”

“Oh it’s okay I’ve heard worse,” Colin called from the table causing Ilia to erupt in giggles and snorts.

“From who!?”

“From Talo. He knows a lot of bad words.” He sounded almost impressed as he leaned back in the chair, balancing it on it’s back legs. Ilia gave him a slight reprimanding look causing him to pull his seat back into the upright position.

Reluctantly, Rusl pulled away from the hug, giving Link another pat on the shoulder as he did so. “I’ll have to have a talk with Jaggle,” he sighed running a hand down his cheek as he turned to his youngest son.` “Go get your mother, let her know dinner will be ready soon.” The three of them watched as Colin raced off, the sound of his footsteps dimming as he ran through the house on his quest.

They rested in near silence for a moment. The only sound was the gentle hum of the oven as their dinner cooked. It was peaceful, calm. The perfect respite after a week of stress and shouting and heartbreak and loss. If Link closed his eyes he could imagine that he was standing in the past, back before he’d ever heard of Zelda Harkinian, back before he’d fallen for her, and back before he’d lost her. He could imagine, for a second, that the ache in his chest wasn’t there, and that it was just another family dinner.

“I meant what I said,” Rusl spoke, voice low as if to preserve the calm that had settled. “There’s always a chance Link. Don’t give up hope just yet.”

<><><>

Actually hyped for this chapter? What happened I got super excited for it! Looks like I'm getting back into my flow at last! Really quite proud at how it turned out and a massive thankyou once again to @electragoob and @andelynk for helping me out, and @zeldasdiaries/ @missdellarosa for being incredibly supportive and wonderful <3

And that's to you all who are sticking with me through this!

We've got one more chapter and then it's the epilogue

#tp zelink #zelink #zelink fanfic #tp zelink fanfic #puppy love #tp zelda #tp link

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