A/N: WHAT IN THE WORLD another chapter?! Already?! Who am I, and what have I done with myself?!
Thank you guys so much for the reviews, you are awesome! As a matter of fact, one of you gave me an idea that I'm looking forward to incorporating into the next chapter, so thanks for that, too! Hope you guys like this one.
Not My First Guest
This isn't the first time I'm having a girl over to my place for dinner, but it's the first time it's a girl that I can't stop thinking about, that I lay awake remembering at night and that distracts me so thoroughly from my work that I stop caring about it; the first girl I really wish I could've brought to meet my parents; the first girl I've invited home since I opened the Domain.
Just getting her to come was more effort than I'd bargained for. She wasn't kidding when she said she had control issues; she wants everything planned out and all the information up front, so my ploy of slipping her information on an as needed basis as a tactic to keep in more regular contact, while effective, definitely had her squirming on the edge of her comfort zone. When I told her I lived in the West Necluda Building, her immediate response was to ask for my apartment number. I didn't give it to her, of course. It started out as a game, but it's escalated to the point where I can't tell her now as a matter of principle. We're both way too competitive. And even if she does it kicking and screaming, the fact that I can get her here without telling her means that she's interested enough to put up with it, and I'm pretty pleased about that.
My phone vibrates on the counter and I snap off the blowtorch to check the message.
Getting in the elevator.
I can see her crossing her arms already.
Top floor.
I don't know why I bothered putting my phone down. Her response, which I should've predicted, is immediate.
Apartment number?
Why are you so obsessed with that? It's like you're stalking me.
I smirk to myself as I go back to putting the finishing touches on the meal. I left the door open and there's literally nowhere else to go once she steps off the elevator, which I'm sure she wasn't counting on, so the game was basically rigged in my favor from the beginning. I'll put her out of her misery after she gets here.
Less than a minute later I hear the door close and her heeled shoes evenly rapping down the hall. She rounds the corner into the kitchen, and her arms are folded exactly as I'd imagined.
"The penthouse," she accedes quietly, her expression disapproving. "Clever."
"Hi," I greet her as charmingly as I can. She's not so generous as to give me a smile, but something in her expression softens, and my pulse thrums contentedly.
But then she looks me over, and suddenly her eyes narrow. "What are you doing?"
Her voice is so accusatory I actually second guess myself. "Making dessert?"
"Are you blowtorching crème brûlée?"
I try to stifle a grin. Gods, she's gorgeous when she's irritated with me. "Is that a problem?"
"Garbage boy my eye," she mutters, pacing across the kitchen into the rest of the apartment.
The kitchen is state-of-the-art, of course, and sits on a platform along the back wall, across from the wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. Submerged a few steps beneath that is the living area, with my baby grand on the left wall, and the sofa and coffee table facing the TV on the right.
"Nice view," she says, standing on the lip of the stairs as she absorbs the cityscape.
It really is. It's a spectacularly panoramic backdrop when I'm working in the kitchen, so, predictably, it's my favorite feature of the penthouse. But it's much better with her standing in the foreground. I could watch her watching it all night. I shut off the blowtorch before I burn something important; the sugar is looking pretty golden anyway.
"5201," I finally tell her, and she flashes me a grin.
"Was that so hard?" She turns again and descends the elongated steps, crossing to the window. "So, this is your favorite building in the city, then? What do you love about it?"
"I like the architecture," I shrug, cleaning up my workspace. "The asymmetry, the silver in the framework. It's intriguing without being unnecessarily complicated."
Sort of like what she's wearing, actually: a deep gray and blue striped V-neck sweater that accentuates her in all the right places and dark wash jeans. Simple and effortless, and frustratingly attractive. I try to focus on putting the utensils away, but suddenly I can't remember where the blowtorch goes.
"I need a drink," I mutter, crossing to the cooler. "Wine?"
"Sure," she answers, wandering over to the piano. I uncork a bottle of Bloodleaf from the Akkala Valley and take her a glass, and she watches me calculatingly while she takes a sip.
I smirk slowly, watching her watch me. "What?"
"I'm still trying to figure you out."
I flash her a smile and head back up the stairs. "Ask me anything."
She follows me cautiously, leaning her elbows on the island while I pull the dinner plates out of the convection oven. "Is Zora's Domain yours?"
"Yep," I answer, putting the plates on either side of the centerpiece on the small, counter height table just off the kitchen tiles. I go back for the rest of the settings while she conjures another.
"Did you grow up around here?"
"Uh huh," I say, placing the amuse bouche and the tiny composed salad.
"What about your family?" she asks as I take the dessert to the table. "Are your parents in the city?"
I preemptively give her a warm smile; I know she's going to be mortified in about two seconds. "My parents died in a car accident twelve years ago."
She blanches. "Gods, Link, I'm so sorry."
"It was a shock to everyone," I admit, pulling her chair out. I can tell she's berating herself, so I keep going; it usually puts people at ease when they see I'm willing to talk about it. "They were great. I was only 16. A lot of people were worried I'd spiral out of control without them around to keep me in check."
She smiles gently. "You seem to be doing all right for yourself."
"It was all them," I confide with a smile, taking the seat across from her. "Their will was very specific. They set aside how much they thought I'd need to live comfortably for a few years, but they wanted me to put myself through culinary school. They knew how much I wanted to go. And they believed in me. They told me to put the rest into doing what I loved. So I built the Domain. I sunk everything into it; I would've been penniless if it hadn't worked out. But I knew they wanted me to at least get the chance to try, you know? I didn't want to play it safe and take that away from them. So, as you can imagine, the Domain is more than just a business venture to me."
"I'm getting that," she nods, and the glimmer in her eyes reminds me the way she looked at me after I kissed her in the aquarium.
I laugh a little at myself, feeling like I've gotten carried away. But I can't seem to stop it from spilling out of me. "I was obsessed with it for a while. Friends would try to keep up with me, keep me balanced, but I was too stressed out and busy to reciprocate. I haven't had anything even resembling a social life for the last couple years. And I thought I was fine with that. But meaningful interaction with other human beings is kind of a key ingredient for happiness, apparently."
"That's something I'm still trying to figure out," she admits, cutting into her roasted vegetables.
"Tell me," I pry, hoping she won't mind if I flip the tables on her.
"I feel like I'm doing the same thing, but for much less noble reasons." She wrinkles her nose again. It's like it's a preprogrammed reaction to talking about her career path. "I do like Archaeotechnology. It's interesting, and I don't think I'll ever get bored of it. But it isn't a dream of mine or anything. My parents are academically oriented and insisted I get the best education I can—they're both Lanayru alumni, and as far as they were concerned it wasn't so much a question of whether or not I enrolled there as it was a question of what I'd pursue once I did. Recently they've gotten on this kick where they want me to meet someone respectable—translated also a well-performing Lanayru student—but those haven't really been relationships as much as they've been frustrating exercises in finding compatible candidates based on statistical probability."
"Hence the spoiled ex," I recall mildly, unreasonably jealous, and she nods once.
"Other than that, I've been spending all my energy on coursework, and I've kind of alienated myself in the process." She pauses, grimacing. "Sorry. I must sound like such a whiner. My parents might be demanding, but at least I still have them."
"That's not fair," I disagree. "Everybody's got problems."
It's not the most eloquent thing I've ever said, but she seems happy with it.
"Thanks," she smirks. I still haven't touched my food, and I wouldn't have noticed except her eyes flick to my untouched plate. She swallows. "Something wrong?"
"No," I answer reflexively, and then backpedal a little, trying to sound more convincing. "I just don't have a huge appetite all the sudden."
She sighs at herself, putting her fork down with a clatter. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have asked. I'm so sorry, Link, I didn't—"
"No, Zelda, that's not it," I interrupt as earnestly as I can, blathering on too quickly. "I was just thinking, before you got here, about different things, about how I—"
—can't stop thinking about you, how you're the first girl since this whole thing happened that can make me smile, how happy I am to have you and how nervous it makes me to think that it's so early on and I could so easily ruin everything—
"—you know what, forget it," I shut myself down, reaching for a spoon and my dessert and leaning back with it in my chair. Her eyes are miserable and I'm teetering dangerously close to saying something that's going to make one or both of us extremely uncomfortable, and the only real solution here is crème brûlée. "This is all I feel like eating right now."
Her eyes widen. "Are you serious?"
I break the perfect shell without hesitating, dip in, and then shamelessly drag the custard off my spoon. "Yep."
She looks over the table, flustered. "But you went to all this trouble—"
"I cook like this all the time," I wave her off, shoveling in another mouthful.
She hesitates, thinking. "Dessert first, huh?"
"Take a chance," I encourage her. "Be a rebel."
But she's still torn. "I don't have a ton of experience in that department."
"Lesson one," I say with a straight face as I stand, cross to her side of the table, and hand her her spoon. "Eat dessert first."
She smiles a slow, mischievous smile as she takes it, and suddenly I want to pin her against the refrigerator. Instead I wander down the steps and lean against the back of the couch, staring at the lights speckling the city. It's starting to rain, and the soft patter on the glass matches my change in mood; we've definitely crossed over from the charming and elaborate impression I'd planned on into cozy and comforting. She's sitting sideways in her chair, legs crossed, savoring her first bite.
"Want to watch a movie?" I suggest randomly, and she nods with a happy sound of affirmation, mouth too full to respond properly, and hops off the chair. She plops on the couch and turns the TV on while I go back to retrieve our wineglasses, and I flip off the lights so the room is bathed in the glow of the screen.
"I want to binge-watch something," she announces as I'm on my way back. "I tried it once when I had the flu last semester, and it was very satisfying."
"You tried it once?" I repeat incredulously, setting our glasses on the table. I pull a blanket out of the storage ottoman and drop it on her, still floored. "You need to come over more."
I know I would like it if she did. Her lips twitch up gently, and I wonder if she's thinking the same thing. She's scrolling through the options on my streaming service, the images of each title splashing light and color over her face, and suddenly I can't take my eyes off her.
She picks a popular serial, which, coincidentally, I haven't seen either. Not that I care what we watch, so long as I get to be near her. She puts the remote back on the coffee table and slides over to lean up against me, positioning herself so my arm naturally falls across her shoulders, and drapes the blanket over us both. I'm glad; it saves me the trouble of having to gradually sneak my way over like a fidgety teenager.
The show is good. She pauses it part way through to argue one of the philosophical quandaries with me when I don't express the conviction she does, and the plot is engrossing enough that we're both excited to move on to the next episode as the credits are rolling.
Two episodes in, I grab our dinner plates off the table so we can pick at them while we watch, and the leads who hate each other so much are still in denial over their mutual attraction; an episode after that, we've finished off the Bloodleaf and her head is resting on my shoulder; and somewhere in the midst of the fifth episode, I fall asleep.
Several hours later, I wake up to a rumble of thunder and Zelda shifting in my arms. She presses her face into my throat, taking a halting breath as we get our bearings in unison. The TV shut itself off at some point and the downpour outside is obscuring the light from the city, leaving us almost completely in the dark.
"What time is it?" she asks blearily, and I blindly reach for my phone. When I click it on, we both squint unhappily at the light. I squint a little harder, and manage to make out some numbers.
"3:30 in the morning," I mumble, shutting off the screen and dropping my phone onto the floor disgustedly.
She growls as she sits up, dropping her face in her hands and clumsily rubbing her eyes. "I have to go."
"Just stay the night. It's pouring out there."
She sighs, torn between her exhaustion and her practicality. "No. I have class tomorrow, and you'd have to make up the couch—"
"I'm not making up the couch at 3 AM," I object crabbily. "We can both sleep in my room."
"What?!" she snaps, alarmed but still too groggy to look properly affronted. "No!"
"I'm talking about actual sleeping, Zelda," I sigh exasperatedly, too tired to find much humor in the situation. "It's pouring rain, and it's late, and by the time you got home and actually got ready for bed you'd be wired and barely have time to get any sleep anyway. Just stay."
"But I don't have my toothbrush, or a change of clothes, or a hairbrush—"
"I don't need a list of reasons," I interrupt hotly, overtired and grumpy that she doesn't want to stay with me. "Just make up your mind. Yes or no."
She folds her arms, still squinty-eyed, and huffs. She makes me wait a while, and I'm about to just get up and drag myself into the bedroom without waiting for an answer when she finally mumbles, "Fine."
I manage a noise of acknowledgement as I get off the sofa, retrieve my phone off the floor, and lead her to the bedroom, which is just off the TV area. I leave the mess on the coffee table for the morning.
She rakes her fingers through her hair as she gravitates towards the bed and peels back the covers. I stuff my phone under my pillow, hoping my alarm won't wake her in the morning, and climb in beside her. The sheets are still cold; I pointedly ignore the space she's put between us, grabbing her by whatever I can find and pulling her closer.
"Hey!" she complains, but I know there's no way she wouldn't rather have me for warmth, too.
"Shut up and go to sleep," I murmur into her hair, and after a moment she tangles her fingers in mine.
Not long after that I drift back to sleep, lulled by the sound of her breathing and the rhythmic drumming of the rainstorm.
My alarm goes off at 5 o' clock, and as soon as I'm cognizant I shut it off, hoping not to bother her. There's a huge corporate event at the Domain today, and since I wasn't there to oversee everything last night there's probably a laundry list of things that didn't get done; I can't afford to sleep in with her like I want.
I manage to carefully get out of bed, shower, and dress without waking her. The sunrise is just starting to paint the room as I'm ready to leave. I quickly clean up the mess from the night before and turn on the coffee machine for her, and then venture back into the bedroom to grab my phone. I catch myself staring at her in the pale light; her hair is tangled and splayed across my pillow, her expression unguarded, and my pulse throbs when I think back to how perfectly she fit in my arms last night. I push my luck and lean down to steal a kiss before I go. Her lips are unbelievably full and soft, and she stirs under my touch, trying to lean into it. I pull away before I can wake her, and she settles again with a sigh.
I turn again in the doorway for one last glance as I go, watching her sleeping form nestled in my bed, and I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Gods, Zelda," I mutter, raking a hand through my hair as I turn to leave. "I'm falling for you."