Chapter Text
Link jolts awake, panting and hot. For a moment, he sits in his bed, shoulders heaving as he catches his breath, until the sensation of waking up hot, sweaty, and tense pulls him fully into consciousness. He throws his covers off, trying to remove the sensation of warm fabric sticking to his damp skin.
Link has only two types of dreams, now. He wakes from either kind with a racing heart, sweaty palms, and frazzled head. Both fluster him enough to prevent a swift return to sleep. Only one leaves him with the searing burn of shame deep in his core.
It’s not the nightmares. He’s used to those; he’s been having those as long as he can remember. He’s sure he had them before he can remember, too. All he needs to do after a nightmare is step outside, get some fresh air, remind himself the difference between the waking world and his nightmares. The evidence is usually visible. One look at the ruins of Hyrule castle, starkly outlined in the moonlight, free of any malicious haze, is enough. Ganon is gone, Zelda is free, Hyrule is safe. The nightmare has passed. The horror is over.
It’s the other type of dreams that truly bother him. He closes his eyes, rubbing a sweaty hand against his forehead, and flashes of the dream run behind his eyelids.
“Link,” she whines, eyes half-lidded, hands on his chest. “Please…”
His hands finger the hem of her short nightgown. She bites her lip.
That nightgown on the floor. The princess on top of him, straddling his hips, her body pressed against his, her lips on his ear, whispering something about how the contraceptive was finally ready—
He forces his eyes open, hoping to banish the visions, but he can’t stop hearing her whine out his name.
He sighs, standing up and walking to the window of his room in the inn. He had practically had to beg Impa to let the princess and him stay here, in two regular rooms, as opposed to Impa’s house. If Zelda hadn’t pulled her royalty card, Impa may have won. Despite how old and stubborn Impa was, she was a loyalist, above all else, and she would let Zelda, Crown Princess of Hyrule, stay in a cheap commoners’ inn (in a separate but nearby room to her appointed knight, of course) if that was what Zelda truly wanted after defeating Calamity Ganon. This once, perhaps because of the princess’s recent success, Impa gave her the luxury of choice.
Her hands reach for his tunic, tugging it up and over his head effortlessly, like she’s done it a thousand times before. Her hands run up his bare chest, her fingers fire on his skin, and she pushes him back against the door. She reaches a hand down his trousers, too impatient to bother pulling them off before wrapping her fingers around him and stroking. She smiles when he gasps, kissing one of the scars on his left shoulder. He twitches into her touch as she pulls desperate little groans out of him.
Now he wishes he had the furnishings of a home to distract him rather than the lackluster walls of a room at an inn. Maybe he could have flipped through some of the books on Impa and Paya’s shelves or made some tea. Now all he has is a boring landscape painting and the window overlooking Impa’s house.
Not that he really wants to be distracted. He’s admitted it to himself by now—he likes these dreams. He was scandalized by them at first, horrified with himself when he woke up not a week after having defeated Ganon from a dream involving himself, the princess, and some very un-sacred actions in a very sacred spring. But now he likes reliving them when he wakes up. He knows he shouldn’t—he knows it’s wrong, but he never knows it’s wrong in the dream, where the princess is his and he is hers, and when he wakes, reliving it is the closest he can get to going back to it.
She squirms beneath him on her bed, panting and whining and pleading and moaning his name, his fingers between her thighs. He’s teasing her, they both know it, but he’s never heard anything quite as intoxicating, as addicting, as the sounds of her impatience, so he teases until her hand tightens on his wrist and she hisses out a half-angry, half-desperate, “please!”
He sat up long enough to finally pull off his trousers, but she’s pulling him back on top of her, her lips nipping at his ear, maybe whispering something there, wrapping her legs around him.
He clenches his hands into fists, willing his fingernails to dig into his palms. Did his hundred-year slumber make him soft? Did the nine-month journey away from her upon his awakening weaken his resolve so much? Or was he not plagued with this longing, this yearning, this burning, before? How had he handled such intense desire for her then?
He lets out a frustrated grunt before throwing on a tunic and some trousers and leaving his room, hoping the cool midnight air will help shock his body and mind out of its trance. If nothing else, he can spar with one of the training dummies outside to try to burn off the buzz from his dream.
She rests her head on his chest afterward, and he strokes her hair. They fit together perfectly; they always would. Were they not destined for each other, handpicked by the Goddess herself to be a divine match? She says something he doesn’t hear, or maybe doesn’t remember, before turning up to look at him with the most beautiful green eyes, wide and maybe even filled with love—
He shakes his head, rubbings his eyes, pleading with his brain to spare him the pain of taunting him with a princess who loves him back before looking around desperately for a distraction.
Instead, his eyes land on none other than the princess herself, standing in front of the goddess statue, at Nayru knows what time it is in the morning, a cloak thrown lazily over her nightgown.
“Zelda?” He asks, both surprised and worried to see her, silently cursing himself for not fully able to shake the mental image of her from his dream.
She jumps at his voice, turning then freezing like a mountain doe looking down the shaft of an arrow. “Link?” She asks, her voice equally surprised.