THE DAYS IN FEBRUARY
by Cappucinno

Day 13. Breakfast

The next morning Zelda was having serious problems looking Link in the eye.

After slamming the door in his face following being caught with her pants down so-to-speak, she'd been carefully avoiding the infuriatingly charming, devastatingly handsome Link Forester. Of course, Malon had caught wind of the whole thing and ran over later that night demanding details and generally having a feminine fit.

Thinking about it, that was really when this whole trouble began. Something about seeing Zelda surrounded by a sea of tissues, pink-nosed, and coughing with a sick kitten had reminded Malon that her best friend was, in fact, recovering from a bout of illness that had prompted her to faint at work. She was appropriately worried and fussy and insisted upon staying with her to make sure she didn't get any worse.

That was all well and good, but then Malon being Malon—better known as Malon being a devious little shit—had coerced into coming upstairs to an impromptu brunch date the next morning.

There had been some logic to quell Zelda's protest—something along the lines of her fridge being empty and generally being too ill to take care of herself—and she was forced to give in.

Which put her where she was now, sitting across the table from Link, dutifully pushing her scrambled eggs around on her plate and carefully avoiding all eye-contact.

Link for his part was grinning at her over his breakfast plate like a madman.

He was also conspicuously shirtless.

"God, Link, these pancakes are the best. Aren't they the best Zel?" Malon was shamelessly oblivious to the struggle taking place between her tablemates.

Zelda hmm-ed unconvincingly.

"Well, I think they're pretty damn good. Thanks for making breakfast so last minute, Link."

"No, thank you, Malon." Link responded, smug and debonair all at once with that Cheshire-cat grin on his face. He turned to Zelda with feigned politeness, smiling a little too broadly and looking a little too self-satisfied. "So what do you think of them, Zelda?"

"I think you should put a damn shirt on."

"I don't seem to recall you having a shirt on the other morning—"

Zelda dissolved into coughing fits, glaring at the man. Through the coughing her words were lost, but judging from the few syllables that came out clearly they weren't fit for dining table conversation.

Malon chose that moment to disappear into the kitchen.

"What was that princess?" Link's grin grew. Zelda was decidedly against noticing that between his shirtless-ness and that smile, he was being incredibly distracting.

"You know, I really don't like you." She sighed and rubbed her forehead, massaging away the headache she knew she was getting from this breakfast ordeal.

"I think you're just mad I saw you naked."

Zelda would have corrected him, but doing so only to clarify that he'd only seen her in her underwear didn't seem like much of a victory. Instead she just glared and blew her nose at him in response. Loudly.

It didn't seem to deter Link in the slightest.

"You know, I didn't really take you for the sleeping-in-nothing kind of girl…"

"I would really appreciate it if you didn't think about what I might sleep in."

"Now why would I do that when you already don't like me?"

Zelda contemplated throwing her nose-blowing napkin at him.

Link just smiled.

Day 14. Business

"Link? …Hello? Earth to Link?"

Link blinked back into awareness with a start as Malon waved a hand in front of his face.

"Sorry, what was that?"

Across the conference table from him Malon sighed and ran a hand over her face. Between them was a litany of executive files, various news clippings, mountains of statistical analysis, and other "critical" documents that had fallen into his lap with the death of his father's business partner.

"You know, it would be nice if you could, I don't know, not think of Zelda naked while we're trying to work." Malon said sarcastically, absentmindedly shifting piles around in front of her.

"I wasn't—" Link stopped at Malon's death-glare. "…alright, well not naked anyway."

Malon sighed loudly. Link had more or less begun to think of her sighs as silent screams. As it were, he'd been subject to her silently screaming at him with great frequency over the past few days while they struggled to sort out exactly what he would need to do to assume position as CEO of his father's company.

Honestly, he would rather be at Beyond Bizarre Bakery sorting out shifts with Shane.

"Link!"

He snapped back to attention again.

"What?"

Malon gave him a pointed look and he threw his hands up in the air exasperatedly.

"I wasn't!" He defended himself with a scowl and some aggravated hand-waving. "Seriously! I wasn't! I was thinking about Shane."

The redhead across the table put the papers in front of her down and raised a brow incredulously.

"Link, is there newfound curiosity you're not telling me about?"

"Goddamn it Malon." Link ground out, trying to resist the urge to reach over and strangle his assistant. "Shane and the bakery. The bakery."

"Ohhh. Well, that's a relief."

Sensing his frustration, the redhead wisely chose to avoid bringing up the topic of Zelda. Instead she frowned and sat back, reading between his tense shoulders and general air of distraction.

Malon straightened and leaned forward, looking at her roommate a little more seriously.

"Link, you know, if you don't want to do this… you can tell your dad to find someone else."

Link's shoulders sagged and his gaze drifted to the window, looking out over the city from the high-rise corner office he'd inherited. After a moment he shook his head and reached for one of the many papers littering the table.

"No, it's fine. I owe him this much, at least." He blew his bangs from his eyes, making a mental note to get to the barber at some point in the next week. "So, back to business—what do we want to do about these tax expenditures?"

"Link." This time he was the one to raise his brows as he looked up at Malon. "What about your bakery? That's your dream. I mean that was, you know, the plan."

Link looked back at the paper in front of him, skimming it over.

"It'll be fine. The staff can manage without me full time."

"Wait. You're not closing it?"

Malon and Link looked at each other with equal surprise.

"Close it? Why on earth would I close it?" Link looked at the redhead incredulously. "Do you have any idea how many bets I'm on my way to winning at that place?"

A/N: And so ends another chapter. Any feedback on the pace, characters, relationships—whatever you think up—is more than welcome. I hope you enjoyed reading! I'll see you all next week (with any luck).

Love,

Cappucinno