Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda.
11: Collarbone Kiss
(Wind Waker!Zelink4lyfe, when they are a little older, sloppy teen makeouts, Tetra and Link have their priorities all sorted out, on some level their relationship will always remain "two little kids fighting")
Tetra has this thing about letting her hair down whenever she and Link are making out, and he doesn't get it at all.
She also has this thing about shoving, too, but that one Link actually understands. After all, it's pretty fun bickering and fighting over whose turn it is to get to be on top while they're kissing-who gets to be the one pushing the other person on their back on the deck, or pressed up to the mast, or against the nearest wall, or down into Tetra's bed.
Always Tetra's bed, not Link's. Like the rest of the pirate crew, Link strings up a hammock belowdecks to bunk in, and you can't shove someone down into a hammock. Tetra said you can't, and Link said you definitely could, and he then proceeded to prove her entirely correct.
The matter hasn't come up again since.
Anyway, right now Tetra's the one on top and pinning Link to her mattress. He was winning this time around, until about ten seconds ago, when Tetra reached up and tickled him because she's a sneaky ruthless pirate jerkface who thought of it first like that.
Well, he landed his elbow right in her stomach when he collapsed on top of her. Hah.
His chest heaves a bit as Link tries to catch his breath, and above him Tetra-who's also panting a little painfully-winks. He gulps and wets his lips, even though they don't really need it. It's really lucky it turned out girls don't actually have cooties, because he's pretty sure the spit in his mouth isn't entirely all his anymore.
Tetra smirks, and flicks her tongue across her lips as well, like she's going to eat him or something, and actually it's pretty darn terrifying when she makes that face, but also kind of in a good way? Link's stomach clenches funnily and he swallows again. Her smirk widens.
And then she reaches up with one hand to tug her hair out of its bun, and she gives it a quick tousle with her fingers so it all spills down in kinky waves around her face.
Link still doesn't know why the heck Tetra always does this.
She looks kind of weird with her hair down, because she pretty much almost never wears it down, and it only ever gets in the way while they're making out. Sometimes when they're really sloppy some strands get stuck to her face, or his face, or it even gets in his mouth, and because her hair's so long it goes right down Link's throat where it feels funny and gross and choking and he can't spit it back out fast enough.
He thought maybe it's just that Tetra has a thing about hair. Sometimes when she shoves Link up against the wall-if he's wearing the hero's clothes that Grandma keeps sewing him every time he drops by Outset and she finds he's grown an inch, even though he's not ten anymore-she yanks his hat off his head and runs her fingers through his hair before she tilts his face up and claims his mouth with hers.
So he thought, since she always lets her hair down and maybe she's got a thing about hair, that it'd be really smooth and suave and sexy of him to reach up and comb his fingers through her hair too while they make out.
It's not. It's awkward and not-sexy and it usually ends in Tetra biting him or something, which might be sexy if she wasn't doing it just to injure him. No matter how pretty her hair looks, no matter if it hasn't been smushed into her pillow yet or matted up against a wall, it's always a secret mass of tangles. And Link's fingers get caught in the knots and he can't pull them out and Tetra gets pissed when he keeps tugging at her head. Then she makes him comb her hair out properly afterwards, gently and from the ends first, like this is Link's fault somehow.
It's not his fault, it's Tetra's fault.
And she keeps letting her hair down every single time anyway.
Tetra sighs loudly against Link's mouth. "I do it because I want to, idiot," she says. "Who said you got an opinion on how I do my hair, anyway? Now shut up."
Of course Link knows that whether she puts her hair up or down isn't any of his business, duh, but just because something's not his business hasn't ever stopped him before. Besides, he's just curious.
Tetra moves her mouth down to Link's throat, because his throat isn't going to accidentally bite her tongue when it keeps yammering on about stupid things in the middle of making out. "I told you, because I like it down."
Some of her hair brushes along the side of his neck and curls under the collar of his shirt, and Link squirms ticklishly. He scrunches his nose up. Tetra better not be working on giving him a hickey again. He's told her he doesn't like them, because she keeps leaving the red marks where everyone can see, and all the other pirates snicker at Link even though it's not funny.
(He's also said he doesn't like giving Tetra hickeys either, because that just makes the pirates glare at him, a lot, for some reason. But she keeps countering with captain's orders. Because she's a jerk.)
"All you do is bitch and moan," Tetra says. "Jeez." But she stops.
Link's shirt is a fairly new one that he got, with a v-shaped slit at the front of the collar that laces up, because he's decided that kind of shirt is cool and it probably makes him look like a rugged and dashing and adventurous swordsman. It seems to work for Tetra's pirates, anyway. So Tetra tugs at the laces to undo them and folds one half of the collar back so she can get at his chest.
She presses her lips to his collarbone, and her hair keeps brushing against his bare skin as she traces the length of his clavicle with tiny kisses. Link squirms again. He's already been cheated out of his turn to be on top, so he doesn't have to put up with this torture anymore.
Being careful not to get his fingers tangled up, he reaches and shoves all of Tetra's dangling hair over her other shoulder where it's mostly brushing against his shirt sleeve.
Tetra snorts, her breath warm against his shoulder. Without breaking off her slow kisses as she makes her way back along Link's collarbone, she spares a hand to flick her hair back over her ear the way it had been.
Link gasps a little laugh and shivers under her, his stomach doing that funny clenching thing again. Tetra's the biggest jerk. Ever.
"That," she breathes against his skin, "is why I take my hair down, moron."