A/N: I'M ALIIIIIIIIVE! I am really, really sorry for this wait. My inspiration died on me completely a few weeks ago, and started reviving again only recently. I read an interesting article on writer's block that got me reexamining my writing, and as a result I threw out everything I had for this chapter (including some scenes I was really attached to) and completely started over. Best. Decision. Ever!

So one thing I want feedback on: Do you guys want Ganondorf to reprise his role? I initially just wrote him as a one off, a self-absorbed but not particularly evil plot device, but some of the reviews got me thinking about ways he could fit into the bigger picture. So the question is, do we want some extra, Ganon-filled drama, slightly on the darker side? Or would we rather keep it fluffy and lighthearted? I've given them enough personal issues to create conflict to carry the story a bit more on their own, but I'd like to hear what you guys are interested in. Specifically because whether or not we want to see more Ganondorf will directly impact the way the next chapter ends. So let me know!

Anyway, this probably isn't my best work, and it's on the short side again, but it's here! Thank you so much to all the people who reviewed the last chapter, and a special shout out to TheFrozenFire, whose latest review got my butt in gear to get this thing finished! I hope you like it!

…

P.S. Sorry in advance.

Not My First Decision

It's not the first time I can't make up my mind. And I feel like an idiot, because there's really no middle ground here, is there? Either it is or it isn't. I am or I'm not. We are or we aren't.

Maybe I'm just making too big a deal out of it. I mean it happens all the time, naturally, without divine intervention, to all sorts of people. Maybe the fact that I don't know is the answer. If it was, if I were, I would know, wouldn't I? But sometimes we can't see what's right in front of us. Can't see the forest for the trees, as they say.

Am I oversimplifying it? Is it like a switch, flipped one way or the other with almost no warning? Or is it a gradual transformation, something more difficult to define that takes time?

The doorbell rings and I start, still undecided. But it doesn't matter. Not tonight. I don't have to have everything figured out right now.

So why is it bothering me so much?

I open the door wide, and there he is, his hands shoved into his pockets, smirking up at me from behind a curtain of bangs the color of winnowed chaff. His eyes are the same blue as the summer sky at twilight, glinting with the playful mischief I've come to expect. His smile grows as he watches me, and my stomach flutters.

I've gotten used to those details. Taken them for granted, even.

I wonder if that means something.

"Hey," he says, and my whole body seems to sigh at the sound of his voice.

"Hey," I answer, leaning against the door a little.

He lets himself in slowly. My apartment is decidedly utilitarian, full of books and bamboo finishes and metal inlays that feel more suited to a library or a coffee shop than a home. It doesn't really feel lived in, except when he's here; it feels warmer when there are two cups of tea on the coffee table instead of one, when I can hear the sound of someone else breathing.

My coursework had been especially demanding the last few weeks, but after I turned him down for a night out for the third time in a row on account of it, he asked if he could come over if he promised not to bother me while I studied. And then we did the same thing the next night, and then again two nights after that.

Now it's become something of a routine. His tea is already steeping on the end table, whorls of steam curling out of the mug, and the fireplace is on.

True to his promise, he makes himself as unobtrusive as possible, barely saying a word as we make out way over to the couch where we've spent the evening the last half-dozen times he's come over. He shakes out the throw as I reach for the book on top of the stack I've built for myself and crack it open at the bookmark. I recline against him and he drapes the blanket over us, wrapping one arm around me and opening his book with his free hand.

I felt bad about it at first. Who really wants to go over to their girlfriend's just to spend several hours reading together in total silence? But he says he doesn't mind. He says he wants to support my research. He says there's nowhere else he'd rather be. He says all kinds of ridiculous things that make me too warm. But the funny thing is, I've gotten used to it, and I'm really more disappointed than I ought to be when he can't be here.

I sigh unintentionally, and he shifts under me, kissing the crown of my head. And then he goes back to his book, because he promised not to bother me.

He always keeps his promises. He's always loyal, and honest, and patient, and just generally better to me than I deserve a lot of the time. I lose my place and have to start the paragraph over again.

Study, stupid.

He doesn't bother me while I read, per se, but he is distracting, especially recently. The second I let my thoughts wander to him, to us, it's like I'm being swept downstream in a current. Everything seems so right between us, and that makes me feel like something's wrong. Like something's wrong with me. Like I'm holding back from giving him what I want to give him, and I don't know why.

And now I've lost my place again.

We've gotten to that place where the silence is comfortable, the movements are synchronized, the requests are voiceless and the fulfillments are practically involuntary. We're merging. It feels good; I thought it might feel like I was losing part of myself, or growing too dependent on someone else, but it doesn't. Which is why this nagging feeling that it's incomplete, that something is lacking on my end, is driving me so insane.

After a couple hours of rather unproductive attempts at reading, I let my book fall facedown against my chest, and I take a shallow breath.

"Link?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

There's a quiet shuffle as he closes his book and slides it onto the coffee table just outside my peripheral vision. His other hand wraps around me, too, so I'm enclosed in his arms, and I let my head fall back on his chest. His voice is quiet, reverberating in his ribcage under me.

"What's up?"

I take another breath as I rearrange my thoughts, trying to line them up in logical trains. At the moment, they're spinning around in little figure eights that go nowhere.

"Do you ever feel like answers are staring you in the face, but you just can't see them?" The fire is fluttering in the hearth, breathing, like an irregular heartbeat, and my own voice is quiet too, like I might put it out if I speak too loudly. The flames sound like cloth snapping in the wind, or the distant roar of forgotten water. "Like everything would be so much simpler if you could just stop trying to figure it out?"

"Are we still talking about your thesis?"

I smile just a little. Leave it to him to try to get a laugh out of me when he can tell I'm stressing out.

"I think that's normal," he finally decides, murmuring against my hair. "Everyone overthinks things sometimes. Some of us more often than others."

I hum in agreement, but don't have anything to add otherwise. He holds me tighter.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

It would be nice to talk, just for a while. We've hardly had a chance to recently, with all my projects piling up at once. But about this? Now?

Do I?

I glance at the clock on my desk. Half past ten. We have a little time. I reach beneath the blanket, letting my fingers tangle in his where they're weaved across my belly.

"Must be worse than I thought," he mutters at my prolonged silence, and I shake my head.

"No, it's not bad." I purse my lips, puzzling out the best approach as I try to isolate the real reason this is bothering me so much. I keep coming back to the same concept, this idea that closeness is fluid, and what it should feel like when it's whole. "Was your family very… I don't know… very demonstrative?"

"I guess." He shifts again under me, but I can feel his heartbeat thrumming steadily. "I never really thought about it."

"Did they hold your hand? Put their arms around you?"

"Sure."

I hold my breath. I know he can feel it, but I can't help it. "Say 'I love you' when you got off the phone?"

He pauses, processing. His reply is soft. "All the time."

"Does it bother you that I don't?"

He lets me go, slowly, turning me in his arms. His brow is furrowed as his eyes search mine, turbulent and aquamarine.

"Is that what you think?" he murmurs, troubled.

I feel a sting I can't quite pinpoint and I stare at my hands. "It's just—I know we both said we wanted something serious, and I know you're afraid of pressuring me—"

"It was my parents," he scolds me gently. "I know it's not the same thing."

"I know. I just don't want you to think—I don't—I don't know."

He sits up with me, rearranging us so he can look at me easier, and I'm starting to regret bringing it up. The room is perfectly temperate, but I feel cold without him.

"Zelda," he assures me earnestly, cupping my face and stroking my cheek with his thumb. "I don't have any expectations. I'm just happy to be with you. Don't drive yourself crazy thinking I want something more from you than you're ready to give."

"No, that's not it. I'm not. It's just that I—" I lean my forehead against my hand, trying to think. Maybe it's all the coursework turning my brain to mulch, but I feel like I can hardly get my own thoughts in order, much less communicate them. "Trust me, that's not it."

He drops his hand, studying me again. "Then what is it?"

I stare at him helplessly. I'm leaning further and further away from the switch theory and holding closer to the idea that this is something that happens over time, with gradient shades of intensity, so that you can be part way in and part way out at once. But how do you even begin to measure a spectrum like that? All I know is that watching him watch me with those anxious eyes, so eager to please, so desperate to champion my happiness, so full of confusion and concern, is making the idea of a spectrum feel less and less relevant.

"My family never was demonstrative. Not really. And I know better now—I'm older, I understand their upbringing, their priorities—but back then, sometimes I wondered if they did."

His eyes narrow as he scans mine, as he comprehends, looking for some evidence that he'd misunderstood. "If they loved you?"

"That sounds too dramatic," I amend flatly, but I don't contradict him beyond that, because it's exactly what I meant. "I just mean, I'm not good at… being expressive, in that way."

"I get that. That's fine, Zelda."

"But I—" I sigh shortly, frustrated. "I don't want to be like that."

"It doesn't bother me," he assures me again, trying to placate me. But it's not working. If anything, it just makes me louder.

"But I don't want you to think that I don't!"

"That you don't what?"

"Love you," I say, and silence falls over the room like a blanket.

His eyes are wide, scanning mine mutely. I know my expression must be mirroring his, and my heart is pounding in my chest, but I hardly feel it. He searches me a moment longer, and then his gaze drops and he swallows once. His eyes meet mine again, so tentative, so vibrant, and I want to burst.

"I… I don't think that."

"No?"

"No."

"Oh."

He's still staring at me with those impossibly blue, impossibly honest eyes, and suddenly, groundlessly, I feel a stab of doubt. I look down in a hurry, too afraid to hold his gaze anymore. He wasn't expecting it, and neither was I. And now it's been voiced, and I can't take it back, and he doesn't know what to do with me. I want to apologize, I want to tell him he doesn't have to respond. I want to open my book and bury my face in it and go back to the peace of five minutes ago and pretend this conversation never happened. But then he takes my face in his hands and he kisses me.

The kiss is so charged with emotion I could drown in it. His mouth is insistent on mine, fueled by desire and not by reason. I try to respond, but I'm too caught off guard to meet his intensity, and just let myself get swept up in his advance instead. It's full and desperate and passionate, and when he finally pulls away his eyes are bright, dancing with fervor and fire like I've never quite seen in him before.

He leans forward again, fixated on my mouth, but stops short. I can feel his breath skimming my lips, shallow and cool, and his hesitation is intoxicating and torturous at once.

He murmurs, his eyes flickering haltingly between my eyes and my mouth, "Do you love me?"

My own breath is bated now, making my chest tighten and barely delivering the air I need. The tension keeping us from touching is sprung taut, burning against my nerves like a single, fraying cord. My voice is scarcely a whisper.

"I…" I nod, numbly, hardly aware of anything except his proximity. "I love you."

His mouth pulls up fleetingly into the purest, sweetest smile, and he kisses me again—and again, and again, pressing forward until I tumble back onto the pillow on the armrest with a squeal.

"I know I said I didn't care, but I lied," he says, smirking wickedly, between tantalizing kisses, hovering over me. He pauses long enough to stare into my eyes, filling me with warmth, and says, "I love you, Zelda."

Heat and tension uncoil in my chest, slackening every muscle in my body at once, and I unsuccessfully try to hold back a smile as he kisses me again. He settles over me, pinning me down pleasantly, and when he lets me breathe I'm mesmerized by his eyes. They're depthless, glinting with a satisfaction that makes me feel too warm.

"I'm sorry I made you wait," I whisper, and I flush a little when I hear how breathless I am.

His smirk grows, and my flush deepens. "It was worth it."

My temperature is still rising, and all at once I feel like I'm burning. I bring him down to kiss me again, my pulse flying in my throat. I never want him to let me go. I want to stay like this, trapped in his embrace, forever. I hope he knows. I hope he can feel it in the way I move my mouth with his, in the way my cool fingers are trailing up the base of his neck and splaying through his hair.

He starts to pull away, kissing me once more for good measure when I tug on him in resistance.

"I love you," he tells me again, and then gives me a penitent smirk and says, "And now, because I love you, I'm going to go."

"What?" I breathe, deflated, scrambling to follow as he eases himself off the couch. I catch him by his shirt as we round the sofa, and he puts his arms around me obligingly. "You're leaving? Now? Why?"

"It's late," he murmurs, still smiling gently. "And you still have four chapters to finish."

Of course he noticed how little headway I made.

I relax my grip on his shirt. My hands are open, resting where I had grabbed him at the base of his ribs. He's watching them, and so am I, suddenly transfixed by the sensation of the firmness beneath the fabric, and when I try to breathe it's shallow. My awareness darkens on the edges, narrowing the channel between my surroundings and my brain as though all my senses have tunnel vision. What's leftover is only translating as physical. Very physical. Through the haze, it occurs to me that the lateness of the hour might not be the only reason he's leaving.

"It is late," I finally agree, meeting his eyes.

He gives me a sad smile, and then bends down to kiss me.

"I can't come tomorrow," he murmurs, and I quash the swell of disappointment that follows.

"I know," I smirk, putting on a brave face. "Friday night."

"Friday night," he echoes, touching my face, and then he sighs. "You make working for a living incredibly difficult."

A pleased smile breaks into my expression before I can hide it. "Sorry."

He smiles too. "You don't look sorry."

I can't argue with that, so I pull him in to kiss him softly instead. He sighs again and tangles his fingers in mine, leading me to the door. I wait while he slips on his shoes and his jacket, absently tracing my burning lips.

He opens the door when he's done and looks at me. There's so much in that look. Deep affection; something akin to victory; a gratitude I hadn't expected.

"See you this weekend?"

I nod. Then I test out these new, tremulous waters, and my heart sputters. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he smirks, pecking my lips again. "Bye."

"Bye," I manage, letting him go floatingly and closing the door behind him.

I linger at the door, waiting for the sound of his receding footsteps, which don't come at first. I bite my lip, holding my breath with a smile until I finally hear him head for the elevator. Then I turn and press my back to the door.

I could fly.

I love him.

I love his laugh, I love the way he looks at me when I'm talking too much, I love that I know I can count on him for anything. I love that he subjects himself to hours of my research just so he can put his arms around me. I love that he lets me win when we play board games because he knows how much I hate to lose. I love that he loves me.

I plop on the couch and plow my way through the last four chapters, but I don't retain much. That night I don't get a wink of sleep. I keep thinking of him, of us. And even though I'm sleep deprived, even though my coursework is a mess and I don't get to see him for another two days, I'm happy. I'm sublimely happy.

I'm beaming through my shower the next morning, and through my mundane routine. I'm beaming in the elevator down to the garage, and as I climb into the car and I pull out onto the boulevard, heading towards the university. I'm beaming in the early sunshine, basking in its warmth and in the brilliance that is the perfect start to this perfect day.

I'm beaming right up until the screeching tires and the impact of some lunatic doing 50 mph through a red light bring all of that perfection to an abrupt, breathless end.