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aurathian · 2 years

Text

silk -- ao3

for @zelinktines23 -- prompt silk

But all Link could think about now was how badly he wanted to feel her shiny hair in his fingers and his rough, leathery hands against her silk skin.

His father was a leather craftsman.

Handbags, jackets, gloves, belts, you name it, he made it. And despite his commercial popularity with the people of Castle Town, his most renowned work was done privately for the crown–for the Royal Army.

That was how Link subsequently found himself a knight one day, fascinated by the training courts when he would accompany his father on deliveries to the castle. With him he would bring leather hats, boots, gloves, sturdy pieces of clothing built for training, holsters and equipment, and sometimes fancier creations for those in the castle who commissioned him.

Princess Zelda’s father was often one of those people who requested a special item, and what he did with all these handbags he had no idea. Sometimes, he saw Zelda herself wandering around with these bags or wearing riding gear handcrafted by his father (and he knew it was his father because of the signature carved, tiny yet visible to his trained eyes, on every piece), but aside from that, she was a mythical creature.

Zelda was the hot topic of conversation all over the training yard and the barracks, but in the way that she was the subject of ridiculous rumors.

“I hear she pours her milk before her grains,” said one trainee.

“I saw her take her hair off once. Yeah, a wig,” claimed another.

And Link, the leather craftsman’s son, believed these rumors until his training eventually landed him the sparkly promotion of personal knight to the princess. And, well, she was nothing like the rumors.

For one, she did not pour her own grains or her own milk, and two, her hair was very real. He knew, because each night before bed, she would invite him into her chambers to chat while she brushed her locks.

It was that way for years, and the rumors began to shift into something else; something romantic. Something he secretly wished was true. It was inevitable that spending years and years in such close proximity to someone would cause a person to fall in love, but he was so hopelessly off the deep end he was drowning.

Maybe she felt the same too. Sometimes he wondered, but there were times where he figured he couldn’t deny it.

“Why don’t you come sit next to me?” she invited one night, patting the empty spot on the bed next to her.

“Am I even allowed…?”

“Does it matter?” And there was a mischievous glint in her eye that he couldn’t resist, a glint he had seen ever since he first met her in the courtyards. Once, he’d launched a ball made of dirt he’d compacted in his hands, and to his surprise, she shot one right back.

He reluctantly lowered himself onto the bed next to her and–wow, his hand touched the silken covers and found he didn’t want to ever let go. It was smooth and cool beneath his touch, so unlike the rough blankets in his home.

“Why do you always hesitate to be close to me?” Zelda asked him. “In private, I mean.”

“Well, someone could walk in, or someone could hear–”

“Hear what, exactly?” the princess interrupted with a smirk, to which Link rolled his eyes.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” he grumbled. “And that’s what I mean. They’ll hear you talking all normal and say, wow, that knight of hers has really ruined her. Or something.”

“Is that so bad? That is probably one of the less serious rumors I’ve heard.”

“One time, someone told me you pour your milk before your grains.”

“I was six.”

Zelda sighed and fell back onto the silk sheets, and without even noticing, Link fell beside her, and Goddesses forbid his fingers tangled directly into her hair. Well, tangled was an exaggeration–no, they fell into her locks and glided through smoothly as they made their escape. Her hair was as silk as the sheets, bright and shiny and freshly combed.

“Watch out,” she teased, “someone might hear your fingers in my hair.”

He retracted his hand quickly.

“Someone also once said your hair was a wig,” he continued after a moment.

“Well, what do you think?”

All he did was shake his head and roll over to face her, which itself was a bold move, but he did not look her in her eyes. Instead, he stared just past her head, focusing on the wooden headboard. Even though his eyes weren’t directly on her, he caught the scowl on her face.

“Link,” she whined, scooting up the bed to force his gaze onto her, but his eyes landed on the headboard once again. “Why don’t you look at me?”

And he fell silent for a moment. There were a variety of reasons. One, it was protocol to never look the royalty in the eyes–it was rude or disrespectful or something. He couldn’t remember which. Two, the times he did look in her eyes, he zoned out and either got scolded by another soldier or teased by the princess herself. Three, he was in love, and pigs would fly before he ever even hinted at it.

“I can get in trouble for that.”

“In private,” she deadpanned.

She was on top of him.

Wait, what?

Link blinked once, then twice, and then thrice for good measure just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. When did she do that? How did she get here?

“Now all you can do is look at me,” she huffed with a smirk, and all her knight could do was nod and swallow.

“Uhh, yes, your highness.”

Zelda’s arms quivered from holding her weight above him, so he slowly, doubtfully, helped her stay up with his own hands, and Goddesses was her skin silky smooth. The blush on her face grew as his hands found their place on her arms.

“Can I ask what you’re doing?”

His princess smiled down at him.

And then, gently, tentatively, like she was scared, she pressed her lips to his.

In that moment, he remembered a conversation he’d had with his father one day in his workshop.

“Good leather,” his father huffed as he shuffled a heavy crate across the room, “is soft. It’s flexible, pliable, smooth.”

“Like silk?” he’d asked. He knew what silk felt like, because sometimes they visited the fancy fabric shops in town where they sold it. It was smooth and wavy and cold.

“No, not like silk,” the craftsman chuckled. “Silk is breathable, dainty. Leather is sturdy. That’s why the army orders so many leather goods from us. It protects.”

And that was the difference between them, he realized as Zelda pulled away. That is what had been holding him back for so long, he figured, as her leather-smooth lips left his.

Come back, he said, but not aloud though he wished he had.

“Um,” Zelda murmured, glancing around nervously. She studied his face for a moment, his features still, and quickly scrambled off of him. “I’m sorry.”

Why?

“I didn’t mean to. I, uh, slipped. Um, sorry.” He sat up and watched her nervously pace back and forth and twist her hair in her fingers. She stopped, looked at him, then turned around, face in her hands. “You can go now. I’m going to sleep. I’m sorry.”

Still in a state of confusion, he left the room and shut the door with a soft click behind him, his hand falling off the golden knob. It was silent in the hallway, the air still in the nighttime, only him, the candles on the wall,

and his thoughts.

He messed up. He knew it. His silence looked like disbelief and confusion. Like he didn’t want more even though he had been craving her all this time and he blew it.

Maybe–maybe there was a chance he could salvage what he just destroyed. About a week ago, he commissioned something special from his father.

“A jewelry box?” his father asked, hunched over his workbench. “For you?”

“No, um… for her.”

Though he couldn’t see the smirk, he could hear it in his father’s chuckle, though that laughter died down when Link dangled the necklace in front of his face.

“You’re very serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I think… you know…I like her.”

Link had purchased the necklace from a traveling Gerudo merchant he’d come across one day in the field. His purpose in the field was not to buy expensive jewelry, but maybe it was the merchant’s savvy salesmanship or the way the diamond glittered in the sun that compelled him to buy it, because when he looked at that shimmering gem, he thought of Princess Zelda.

But all Link could think about now was how badly he wanted to feel her shiny hair in his fingers and his rough, leathery hands against her silk skin.

#zelinktines 2023 #zelinktines #zelink #zelda #link #silk #zelinktines2023

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aurathian · 2 years

Text

leather -- ao3

for @zelinktines23 -- prompt leather

She went to bed that night cold. Silk was always chilly.

She was born in the lap of luxury. From birth, Zelda knew glittering gems, poofy, expensive dresses, the finest foods and the softest fabrics. She spent her days with the most exclusive tutors and among the perfectly manicured flowers of the courtyards. In the morning, she woke up long after the sun, and then her maids would gently, relaxingly prepare her for the day. In the afternoons, she’d have a large lunch, attend lessons, and read her books in the grand library. By the evening, after feasting on whatever gourmet cuisine was served that night, she was in a silk nightgown, crawling under her silk covers and resting atop her silk pillow. Princess Zelda had not known hardship until she met him.

She was eight when she met Link, son of the leather craftsman who was one of the sole suppliers of leather goods to the Royal Army. Her father, the King, was close friends with him, and Zelda always saw him requesting a new bag or riding gear for her mother or herself.

She liked Link. When he would visit on delivery days, she’d invite him to play in the garden. When he was over, they played like she never had before. When she played in the courtyards with the children of her mother’s friends, they had teatime or played with dolls or talked about boys and their cooties. When Link was over, it got dirty.

He launched balls made of various substances–mud, moss, clumpy dirt, sometimes snow–at her, usually dirtying her dress but oh how she did not care, because for once she really felt like they were playing, not just making polite conversation over hand-me-down, antique dolls because they had to. She launched mud balls and snowballs and dirt balls right back at him.

By the end of it, she would get a scolding from her mother, but she didn’t really mind; the reprimands were worth it.

Which is why that night she had invited him to sit on her bed next to her.

After he left, laying in her smooth, cool sheets, she wished she could smell leather again. That earthy, slightly sweet scent that seemed to follow her knight everywhere he went. Sure, some of that aroma lingered on the silk of her bed, but it was different. It was so much more pleasant when he was really there and she could feel his skin under her fingertips and his hand in her hair…

Maybe she had gone too far. Maybe she had pushed him by begging him to place his hand on her barren shoulder (scandalous!) or to look her in the eyes. For a pair as inseparable as they were, both by duty and feelings, they barely even made eye contact.

Zelda hated the protocol, and she hated how obedient Link was. Just once, she wanted to unravel him. Just once, she wanted him to put his hand on her body because he chose to. Just once.

She went to bed that night cold. Silk was always chilly.

And that next morning she rose at her usual time and did her usual things with her usual personal knight, who acted as he usually did: silent and unfazed, like nothing happened. It was a usual day.

Even though Link was acting like normal, she wanted to know if he was thinking like normal, too. She certainly wasn’t. Anytime she addressed him, her eyes wandered down to his lips. He kept his trained on whatever was behind her, be it a wall or a window. Sometimes, he knelt on the floor. Was it because he didn’t want to talk to her? Did he hate her now? He was supposed to kneel when he was addressed by anybody of royal stature, but they had spent so many years together that this was… unusual.

“What are you doing?” she asked him at one point, her tone biting and sharp. He winced.

“Kneeling, princess, as I am meant to,” he mumbled. Link couldn’t see it, facing his leather boots on the ground, but tears pricked the eyes of the princess he was sworn to protect.

“Fine,” she hissed, turning and walking away. Obediently, he stood and followed.

They turned a corner where a maid scuttled up to them and told the princess that a new leather delivery was here, and that her father requested she receive it since he was unavailable. Of course, Zelda obliged, and the princess and her knight made their way to the courtyard which was riddled with trainees, some in pairs and others sparring with dummies. At the entrance was Link’s father with a wagon of boxes.

Zelda knew how the deliveries worked. She often accompanied her father to receive them. She also knew that most of these boxes weren’t for the army, but for the nobility who visited the castle often enough that they simply had their commissions delivered there instead. Bags, clothes, sometimes furniture.

“Hello, your highness,” Link’s father greeted warmly. “And my son.” To his son, he nodded, and wrapped him in a hug. “It’s a big delivery this week.”

He began unloading the boxes while Zelda signed off on some paperwork. Link and some other soldiers nearby helped haul the boxes off the wagon and to the side. By the end, there was only one small box left, which Link’s father picked up and handed to Zelda.

“For you, princess,” he said.

“Oh, but I didn’t–”

“No, no, I’m sure you did.”

Link’s father took his wagon and rushed away, leaving a befuddled princess with a tiny box. When she glanced at Link with a brow arched in confusion, he only shrugged and looked past her.

She continued with more of her usual duties and then at nighttime, as usual, her personal knight hung about her room while she brushed her hair. Except they were both silent and it almost turned her red–not with embarrassment.

“Link,” she said, his name slicing the still air, “I’m sorry.”

Her anger was at herself.

“What?”

“We can’t act like nothing happened,” she sighed, setting the brush down. “I’m sorry. Last night– I– I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”

Link didn’t say anything, only hung his head and twiddled with his thumbs–so unusual of him–and kept quiet.

“I feel bad. I know you don’t feel that way, and it was a mistake for me to… to even think of that.”

“Zelda,” he mumbled, “you never opened the box my father gave you.”

“Huh?”

“Just open it.”

It sat on her nightstand, the cords holding it shut still intact. She’d wondered about its contents all day but never had a moment to open it. Tentatively, Zelda reached over and grasped it, pulled it back to her, and carefully unwound the cords. She pried it open and fished around inside, moving aside the tissue stuffed in to ensure whatever was inside didn’t break.

It was a jewelry box. A dark, simple jewelry box made of leather.

“This must be someone else’s order,” she mused, examining the box.

“Open it.”

Zelda rolled her eyes at him with a smile, muttering something about boxes in boxes, and unlatched it.

Inside was a silver necklace with a small, delicate diamond pendant, nestled within the velvet folds of the box. Gently, Zelda lifted it out of the box, hanging it off her fingers so the pendant spun ever so slowly, just enough for her to admire the details.

“I never ordered this,” she said again. “And your father doesn’t make necklaces, so–”

His lips were on hers.

Wait, what?

When did he even approach? He’d been on the other side of the room leaning against a dresser, watching from afar as she opened the leather jewelry box and took out the diamond necklace. He hadn’t moved an inch, and she knew that because she had watched him out of the corner of her eye the whole time. So when did he get here?

It wasn’t like it mattered anyway, she thought, melting into him. He smelled of leather, sweet and earthy, and his textured skin against hers felt right, warm, like everything she had ever dreamed of.

When he pulled away, she found herself moving toward him, lonely at the loss. They gazed at each other for a quiet, soft moment.

“Was that a bad idea?” he asked, all sense of decorum and–thank the Goddesses, Zelda thought–protocol flying out the window.

“No,” she hummed, reaching her hands up into his hair to pull him in for another kiss as his hands, soft as leather, found their home on her silken skin.

#zelinktines2023 #zelinktines #zelink #zelda #link #leather #zelinktines 2023

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