Sheik sat in the sand, back against the stone arch. Link had left only a minute ago and Sheik's body was feeling the loss keenly. He was little embarrassed by how enthusiastically his body had responded to their heated kissing just now. He squirmed around, trying to find a position that made his bodysuit feel less tight over his lingering erection. There was no way to hide it when you were wearing skin tight leather which had made for an awkward goodbye. He'd done his best to pretend it wasn't there and Link had too, except his eyes had kept drifting down to it. Things had been much less awkward for Link, whose tunic covered any potential bulges.
Sheik let out a frustrated snort, head in his hands. He badly wanted to go back to being wrapped tightly around Link, perhaps horizontally and with fewer clothes. Not that he wasn't perfectly okay with the idea of doing it standing up. This was a thing that had never been mentioned in the books he'd read as a boy. They'd always painted love as a good, pure thing, which it definitely could be, but Sheik felt that leaving out the desire and need and the kind of dreams that lonely nights could conjure was a gross oversight. He was in love and it made him feel giddy and light and certainly made him want to protect and care for Link just like the heroes in book. But good Goddesses, he wanted that boy to bang him like a door in a hurricane. The juxtaposition of feelings made him laugh.
Sheik looked up at the desert again, and everything was different but exactly the same. Had that plant always been there? An unnatural wind picked up a few feet from Sheik, creating a very localised sandy vortex. It died as suddenly as it had begun, all the sand dropping away instantaneously, and emerging from the midst of it all, was Link. Sheik pushed himself to his feet, wobbling a little when the soft sand gave way beneath him.
`You're back!'
He pounced, all sinuous muscle like a big cat, and they fell to the sand. He kept his face hovering a few inches above Link's, feeling pleasingly powerful straddling him like this. He slid his knees out, letting his body drop slowly, pressing them together. Link cocked an eyebrow at him, lips curling at the corners,
`It's nice to see you too.'
Link moved in, closing the gap between their mouths, Sheik followed his lead, closing his eyes. Then, the world flipped. Sheik snapped his eyes back open. He was on his back, Link grinning down at his wolfishly. Sheik forgot how to breathe. Heavens above and Hells below, this was more than he could take.
`There's an oasis over there, we could swim,' Link waved his head in the general direction.
`Wha- what?'
`Swim, you know, in water and stuff.'
`Umm, yes, of course.'
Sheik smiled back and really hoped that the water was going to be very cold. Link rolled off him and stood up, holding out a hand to help him up. Sheik took it and was pulled to his feet. For the second time today he found himself trying to pretend the conspicuous lump in his bodysuit wasn't there.
Link kept his hand wrapped round Sheik's and set off for the oasis, pulling the other boy along with him. He was hoping that the swim would help settle the butterflies that had invaded his stomach when Sheik had straddled him. It had taken a lot of effort to not peel Sheik out of his clothes there and then. The idea of actually doing it made Link blush.
When they got to the oasis it was dry, dead and sad. Sheik gave Link a confused look, he responded by holding up his ocarina. The first few notes of the song of storms called the clouds, they scudded across the sky, coalescing and roiling above them. The next notes brought the rain. It thundered down, soaking them to the skin, filling the air with the smell that only came with rain on hot earth. The water ran off the sand and collected in the oasis. Sheik stood, arms outstretched, face turned skyward, laughing in the improbable rain. Link continued to play, a smile dragging on the corners of his lips. The last notes stopped the downpour and sent the clouds away. They were left steaming gently under the desert sun.
As the rainwater continued to drain into the basin of the oasis little fuzzy edged balls of light began to emerge. The fairies darted across the water's surface like luminescent dragonflies. Sheik followed their movements,
`Are they . . . ?' The end of the question disappeared but Link knew was being asked.
`Yeah, they must have hidden when this place dried up and now the water's back so are they.'
`I've never seen any before. Can we still swim here?'
`Fairy folk are pretty friendly so I don't see why not.'
Sheik started stripping as quickly as he could, dropping soaking bandages to the sand. Once his wrappings were gone he began to undo a series of hidden fastenings on his bodysuit. The wet leather proved difficult to take off, Link watched as a bare, well-toned chest emerged. When the curve of pelvic bones stared to appear he found himself having to look away, face burning like the sun. When he looked back Sheik was wading out into the oasis in nothing but his underwear. Link waited until those perfect buttocks disappeared beneath the water before beginning to undress himself.
Sheik waded in until the water reached chest height. He reckoned that in the middle the surface would be perhaps two feet above his head. One of the fairies floated over to him, he held out a hand to it. It stood on his finger, head cocked. After looking at him for a minute or so it took off again, flying closer. It hovered, wings beating like a humming bird's, just in front of his face. It reached out, laying tiny hands on the cut on his lip. The skin felt like it was humming. When the buzzing faded the fairy retreated, staring at him a little while longer before flying away.
Sheik heard the water behind him move,
`That was kind of her.' He turned, finding Link there.
`Do they often heal people?'
`Those that need it, yes.' Link looked up at the dancing lights, `they've saved my life before.'
`Then I owe them a great debt.' Sheik wrapped his arms around Link's waist, reveling in the feel of bare skin under his palms. `If they hadn't, I wouldn't be able to do this,'
He leaned in and trailed kisses from Link's mouth down along his jaw and neck. Link hummed approvingly, tracing abstract patterns over Sheik's back.
`Maybe we'd be better off on dry land?'
As much as Sheik was enjoying being in the water he had to agree with Link. He slowly unwound himself from Link, somewhat unwilling to let go. Fingers twined themselves with his and he let Link pull him back to the sand. When they waded free of the water Link began collecting their forgotten belongings and still damp clothes. Sheik looked over at the temple's edifice.
`Everything alright?' Link came to stand beside him.
`Every time I look at it I can't help feeling like I'm keeping you from something more important.'
Link stared blankly at the temple, `I'm not sure there's anything in the world more important than you, but I know what you mean.'
Sheik didn't reply for a little while. However off hand Link's comment seemed, no words had ever made him happier.
`Don't tell Zelda that, she'll give her lecture on the greater good. She throws things at you if she thinks you aren't listening.'
`Is that knowledge from personal experience?'
Sheik chuckled, `I was something of a captive audience.'
`Well, I think I may have a solution.'
Link put his ocarina to his lips, this time playing the song of the sun. Sun set and moon rise whipped passed, the sky staining with colours that moved like ink in water.
`There, it's night now. I couldn't possibly go into a temple at night, it'd be terribly dangerous.'
The sincerity of Link's reasoning was diminished slightly by the grin that was threatening to take over his face. Sheik tried not to smile back at him,
`No, you couldn't possibly. It would be an awful idea.'
They just looked at each other, each one trying to keep a straight face. Link's lips kept twitching at the corners, and Sheik found that watching someone else try not to laugh made it harder to do the same yourself. He bit his lip. Link screwed his face up, suppressed laughter shaking his body. Sheik punched him in the shoulder,
`Stop it. You'll make me split my lip again.'
Link's convulsions settled a little, he looked up through his lashes at Sheik,
`Then I'll just have to kiss it better again.'
A shudder ran up Sheik's spine, making his heart thunder and his loins ache. He turned away, towards where Link had placed their things beneath one of the trees that surrounded the oasis, even though the darkness hid his blush.
`Come on, we should start a fire, desert nights are cold.'
He almost didn't here Link purr `but I'll keep you warm.' Maybe they wouldn't need a fire. Maybe Sheik's burning face would do the job.
Finding dry wood for the fire wasn't hard, plenty of the oasis trees had shed branches, and Link set them alight with Din's fire. They settled next to each other, backs against the same tree trunk. Fingers curled around other fingers, and their hands rested between them, intertwined. They sat in comfortable silence for a while before the need to touch Sheik became too much for Link to hold back. He took hold of Sheik's chin, gently turning the other boy's face towards him. He leaned in, his first kiss falling feather light. His hand slid up and around, tangling into dark blonde hair, his next kiss had their lips crashing together.
The transition from sweet and gentle to demanding and forceful broke Sheik. He moaned into the kiss. Link responded by capturing Sheik's tongue with his own. Sheik twisted his body, turning himself more towards him. A hand threaded itself around his waist, pulling him onto Link's lap. His thigs splayed either side of the young hero. The hand at the back of his head pulled down, stretching out his neck and breaking the kiss. Sheik's whine morphed into a gasp as lips worked their way across his jaw and neck and shoulder. Hands danced down his back, pausing to take in the contours of his hips before asserting ownership of his arse.
Heaving bare chest against heaving bare chest, they moved in synchronicity. The lines between what was one and what was the other began to blur. One pair of hips ground down to meet the other. Sheik mewled when his own hardness rubbed against Link's. Firm hands on his hips made him repeat the movement. The grinding made Sheik's head spin. His breaths came short and sharp and the world around him was dissolving. He moaned, breath hot against Link's ear,
`Fuck me.'
Hands dropped from his hips. Movement stopped. The world crashed out of solution. He leaned back. Link wasn't looking at him.
`I don't know how.' Link mumbled into the darkness, `I mean, my body does all these things and I keep thinking stuff and I . . . I don't know how.'
Sheik sighed, suddenly Link's decisions earlier, first to leave and then to go swimming, made sense. He was scared. He was scared and he didn't properly understand what was going on. Sheik felt like an idiot for not putting it all together sooner.
`Nobody talked you about this stuff did they? They just let you wake up after seven years and left you to it.'
`I don't know, not really I guess. When I woke up there was all this stuff in my head. It was like someone had tried to make a list of things I'd need to know and just dumped it all in my mind. Some of it's pretty useful. I know more about fighting now, and a whole lot more words and why we get seasons and what makes weather happen and things like that. But then, some of it seems pointless, like, I know how to calculate areas of triangles, which I really don't think I need to know. I mean, how does that help me?' Link threw his hands in the air, and Sheik chuckled, he'd felt the same when he had learnt mathematics. `I know some things about this stuff. I know. . . I know where babies come from and stuff, but it's like whoever put all this stuff in my head got embarrassed, so it's all kind of vague and there isn't anything about how two boys do it.'
Sheik gave him a conciliatory smile, taking Link's hand in his own.
`To be honest, I not sure anyone really knows how this stuff works until they try it but, doing it for real kind of scares me and, theoretically, I know how this works.' He used his other hand to push some hair away from Link's face, `maybe we can work it out together, later, when everything is back to normal?'
Link nodded, `I'd like that.'
`We should sleep. You have a lot to do tomorrow.'