Breath of the Wild College AU fanfic │Thinking About You

Home

The house is empty, only occupied by silence. I leave the lights off and lead Link up to my room in darkness. A boy in my room... This may be the strangest thing I've ever done, but I don't overthink it. I grab the first aid kit from the bathroom and a Château Mouton-Rothschild from the wine cellar, then I return to my room where Link is standing by the glass wall. It's only 8 PM, but the sky is dark as the night.

It's really coming down, but now that we're inside, I don't mind the rain at all. It's quite calming to listen to. My clothes are soaked and covered in mud. I long to take a shower and curl up beneath my warm sheets, but nothing seems more important to me right now than looking after Link. I take my wet socks off and walk up to him to stand next to him on the soft carpet.

"I've never been at a place like this," Link says, gazing at the hills and the storm that consumes them.

"A place like what?"

"This big and private."

Big and private? What a nice way of calling a place empty and lonely.

My room is dark but the lights from the pool and the patio reach up to us, just enough to allow me to see Link's features. I've never seen a person as beat up as him, let alone taken care of the wounds. We sit down on the carpet right next to the glass wall. I pick up the cloth and the wine, and after some hesitation, I grab Link's hand. It's warm, mine are probably really cold.

"What are you doing?" He asks but doesn't pull away.

"Cleaning your wounds?"

Now he pulls away.

"Not with wine," he says amused. This is the first time I see a smile on his face and it shoots electricity through my whole body. My stomach flutters and I'm confident that Earth just stopped rotating and that the entire universe paused for a long second. Through the dark, his eyes are beaming with merriment like two twinkling stars.

"Alcohol disinfects wounds," I explain my intentions.

"Rubbing alcohol does. Wine makes it worse."

"Oh..." This is... embarrassing.

"I speak from experience," he says and I feel slightly better about my lack of knowledge. But I feel worse for him at the same time. How often did he have to disinfect his own wounds?

I dip the cloth in some water and take Link's hand for a second try. Water can never be bad, right? I gently tap the skin around his knuckles, removing the soil and blood from his skin. I have no idea what I'm doing, but it doesn't feel like I can mess up much more after nearly pouring wine over his open wounds.

Most of his hand looks clean now but next I'll have to remove the mud from the flesh of his busted knuckles.

"This might hurt," I say and apply gentle pressure with sterile gauze. Link barely flinches and doesn't show a sign of pain. How much of it is he hiding?

"Sorry," I say quietly. "I'm not good at this like Mipha. I... I shouldn't have run away from you. Mipha would never get herself in situations like that..."

Link places his other hand on mine and meets my eyes when I look up at him in bewilderment.

"I don't need you to be like Mipha. You're perfect the way you are."

My heart leaps. The way he said that just now makes me want to throw my arms around him. He said a simple thing, just his opinion really, so why do I feel the urge to hug and thank him? I force myself to focus on his injuries. His knuckles look much better now. This wasn't too bad.

"Other hand," I say and he places his left hand on my palm. This hand is much worse, probably because he hit the guy with his left fist.

"I'm really sorry."