And my other fill for Ravioli ship week, for that most classic trope of "Only One Bed!" Read it here or on Ao3.
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Link wasn’t home much for a while. After his recovery and agreement that Ravio could use his house while he was away, he promptly found himself halfway across the country chasing clues for several weeks straight.
He did make it back home eventually. Shaking off the dungeon dust, he staggered back to rest and resupply, so tired he’d forgotten Ravio would be there and nearly drew his sword at the enthusiastic greeting that waited for him in what he was used to thinking of as an empty house.
In fairness, his abrupt return seemed to startle Ravio as well.
Now he slumped over dinner, already eyeing the corner where his bed had been shoved aside. It looked like there was just enough room to push one of Ravio’s added tables out of the way and crawl in.
…In fact.
Yes.
There were scuff marks on the floor. New ones, as if someone had been doing exactly that for several nights.
Link realized he’d stopped chewing, spoon dangling precariously from limp fingers. At his back, the sounds of Ravio enjoying his own meal fell suspiciously silent.
It occurred to Link. Finally, belatedly. That he perhaps should have thought of this sooner.
He hadn’t seen any of Ravio’s possessions aside from the stuff he sold. Wasn’t honestly sure he even had any. But the bag was obviously magical, so maybe…?
Link cleared his throat. Ravio twitched at the sound, spoon clattering against his bowl.
“Where have you been sleeping?” Link asked in the most neutral tone he could manage.
“Um. Well. You see.”
When Ravio didn’t continue, Link waited. But aside from clearing his own throat in a distinctly nervous manner, Ravio didn’t continue. Link finally turned to look at him. From the way Ravio dropped his spoon entirely, there was some kind of expression on his face.
“You’ve been sleeping in my bed.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mister Hero!” Ravio immediately returned in a loud but not terribly sincere tone. “I had to leave home so quickly, you see, and I was sleeping on the ground with all those dreadful monsters around before you so graciously lent me your home. It isn’t very comfortable down there. As, ah. As you know. since you’ve probably been sleeping on the ground, too.” He faltered to a stop rather than try to dig himself back out of the hole he’d talked himself into. His hands were wringing together, his posture hunched in a way that made Link think he might be about to throw himself back down on the ground like he had when he was begging for a place to stay. Link couldn’t see the extraordinarily sad puppydog eyes, but he could feel them aimed right at him.
He had spare blankets and a bedroll. The space in front of the fire would be perfectly warm.
But Link wouldn’t get any sleep himself if he made Ravio sleep on the ground while he enjoyed the comfort of a bed mere steps away. If the guilt didn’t keep him up, the sounds of Ravio shifting around certainly would.
He sighed. “Fine.”
Rounded shoulders immediately straightened. Link swore the fake ears on the hood perked straight up. “Really? Oh, thank you, Mister Hero! I promise you won’t even notice I’m there!”
Link doubted that.
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The problem of logistics returned once, after much arguing, they had cleared sufficient space around the bed for them to both now be standing on either side of it. The dying fire cast a dull orange glow through the room, the door locked and the shutters closed for the night. Link was halfway through trying not to think too hard as he stripped down to his nightclothes before he realized Ravio had pulled his boots off and stopped, reaching to fold back his side of the covers with the bunny hood still on.
“Are you going to sleep with that on?” Link didn’t really want those giant embroidered eyes staring at him in the middle of the night.
“I usually don’t,” Ravio said, which wasn’t an answer.
“I don’t care what you look like,” Link tried.
It didn’t seem to help. Ravio faltered, wringing his hands and just standing there awkwardly. He finally cleared his throat. “Could you turn around?”
Eyes narrowed, Link gave him a suspicious visual sweep. “Why?”
“I’m going to take it off.”
“I might roll over in my sleep,” Link warned. He still didn’t have the faintest idea why Ravio didn’t want him to know what he looked like, but obviously he cared quite a bit. It was only fair to warn him.
“I know, friend, I didn’t mean you had to stay facing away all night! I have this!” He pulled something from one voluminous sleeve; after a bit of squinting, Link first thought it a mask, then a blindfold. But it had no eyeholes to be the former and looked too padded and comfortable to be the latter.
“I’m not wearing a blindfold!” he said hotly.
Ravio, Link had noticed, seemed to almost fluff up and out when he worried he’d angered someone against himself. Like a frightened cat with puffed out fur trying to make itself bigger than it was. “It’s not for you, it’s for me! And it’s a sleeping mask, not a blindfold!”
They stared at each other from across the bed. One beat. Two.
Feeling red in the cheeks and more than a little foolish, Link turned around. Rustling sounds behind him; the covers folding back. He heard Ravio sit, then near silence for several long moments, save Ravio hissing a brief curse to himself.
“You can turn around now,” he finally said. When Link did, he found Ravio sitting upright in the bed, hugging the far side, his hood traded for some kind of silk wrap that completely covered his hair and ears and the “sleeping mask.” Between the two, he was still nearly as covered as with the hood alone. Unlike with the hood, it was obvious he could no longer see, the direction of his head aimed somewhere more towards the middle of the room than Link himself.
“Well. Good night, Mister Hero,” Ravio said, sounding as awkward as Link felt.
“Good night,” Link echoed. He watched Ravio lie down and roll onto his side, facing away.
Climbing into his bed with someone else already in it was… odd. Link tried to lay on his back, since that seemed the safest way to not actually touch his bedmate. But he’d never been much of a back sleeper. It didn’t take long for things to start to ache, and no amount of fidgeting was making it any better.
Ravio politely didn’t mention Link’s shifting, but his shoulders drew up under the covers.
This wasn’t going to work. Time for Plan B.
Trying hard to roll over without pulling any of the covers off of his bedmate, Link gave in and flipped to his side.
This presented a new problem. His bed wasn’t terribly large. When he tried to curl up it pressed their backs together; a feeling startling in its intimacy. But more importantly, drawing his feet up meant he encountered Ravio’s own.
“Your toes are cold!” Link yelped.
“So are yours!” Ravio lied.
“They are not!” Link yanked them further up regardless to get his poor innocent calves away from Ravio’s freezing toes, but that just pressed their backs more firmly together. Grumbling, he flipped over again. Onto his stomach now, head turned to the side on his pillow so he could breathe, one arm hugging the pillow and the other curled up against himself; a position Gully had found him in more than once when he was sent to see why Link wasn’t yet awake and working at his apprenticeship. He’d turned his head habitually to the left, and so now faced Ravio, his nose nearly tucked all the way up against the back of his neck. He thought he saw Ravio shiver when he exhaled.
Link liked the way he smelled.
“Is this okay?” He felt the need to check.
“Perfectly fine, Mister Hero!” Ravio returned in a pitch that could accurately be described as a squeak. Link didn’t have the mental energy left to check whether he meant it. The past few weeks had been long, and now that he was finally comfortable they were catching up to him. Incoming slumber weighed down all his limbs.
It felt nice. To fall asleep next to someone. It felt really, really nice.
Not falling asleep on a hard dungeon floor helped, too. Ravio was right. Sleeping on the ground sucked.
Even if he did wake up in the middle of the night to find that Ravio had stolen all the covers. Ravio put them back when he rose before Link did in the morning; Link woke to the warmth of someone else’s lingering body heat in the blankets heaped up over him. It was a feeling he thought he could very quickly get used to.
For the raviolishipweek prompts. Rated T for sickfic.
Spring. New life. New beginnings. New dens.
Ravio flutters his hands as he paces, then strangles his scarf for nothing better to do. Spring means denning season. Spring means danger, in Lorule. Sure, he’s staying with Mr. Hero, now, but denning is common in both realms.
Ravio’s only heard fairytales, whispered late at night by those romantic enough to still believe, on what denning season should be.
A time for a pack to settle and rest. While alphas have a challenge season in the fall, fighting for pack positions, omegas have denning season in spring. The urge to nest grows stronger. Find someplace safe and quiet and settle down to relax. It’s a time to dote on pups if a pack has any. Otherwise, it’s time to tell stories and bond, taking a break from daily life.
At least, that’s what the fairytales say.
Lorule is nothing like that. In a land that’s slowly dying, alphas are rewarded for being cruel. Betas are just as bad, jockeying to take an alpha’s position while suppressing the deltas below. Deltas snap at each other as much as those above and below them. Pack means little when everyone is clawing for the top.
Omegas are at the bottom. Pups spent as little time as omegas as possible, fighting out their siblings to rise in ranks, or breaking off to find new pack gangs. Children are raised with harsh discipline and raised voices. Outside of children, omega status is reserved for those forced out of upper positions as punishment.
Or cowards, if you are Ravio. The constant power struggle terrifies him. The way packs treat each other; it’s barely a step above stabbing each other in the back.
Hilda is an alpha and, for a while, took care of Ravio. He’d been a delta, hoping to learn and grow into a beta.
But then Yuga came along, poisoning Hilda against him. He was pushed out and down till he reached omega status. There he remains.
Even with that adventure over and Lorule saved, he’s terrified of reaching above his station again. One apology from Hilda doesn’t outweigh the multitude of times he’s heard disparaging jabs about his lack of skills.
Ravio is still dithering when footsteps echo and the front door opens.
“I’m heading out for a bit,” Link calls. “Need anything?”
“No thank you!” Is his voice strangled? Will Link catch the agitation in his scent?
The door closes and Link leaves, none the wiser.
Ravio sags against a wall, untangling his hands from his scarf. He doesn’t have the easy neutrality of a delta that Link does, so he’s stuck with omega instincts. That means denning.
If only Sheerow were here to keep him company, but the bird is gone carrying a message to Hilda. She’ll be back in a few days, by which point Ravio should be back to normal.
Dens should be a safe place for a pack to rest together. Plenty of pillows and soft blankets, encouraging lounging or napping. Alphas help keep the omegas cool, promoting large cuddle piles and further group bonding.
As an omega in Lorule, denning is a terrifying risk. Dens can never be in the same place twice, lest they are discovered.
Lorulians take a vindictive pleasure in turning out adult omegas to suffer in the inhospitable land. As a society, the idea that you earned this burns strong.
Ravio’s long grown to resent denning. As a child, it was enjoyable; a time to be taken care of and coddled—as much as any children in Lorule are coddled.
As an adult, it’s another reminder of his place in society and how fleeting safety can be. Without a pack, he is forced to curl up in small nooks and crannies, sweating or clutching an ice rod for a chill. The threat of discovery always looms.
Link’s era is wonderful, but there’s been no mention of denning season being any different. Ravio needs to prepare for the worst.
Prompt: Love, favorite AU (im boring au is that theyre married)
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It's in the small things. It's in the brief ruffle of hair when your uncle is proud of you. It's in the reflection of the sun off of clear water and bright red hair. It's in the first shoots of a sapling in the orchard.
It's in the constellations of freckles across his body. It's in the dirt under his fingernails. It's in the new softness of his stomach. It's in him.
Link will never be able to express all the love he finds in everything about Ravio, it's just not possible. He can't find the words, he can't provide enough emphasis, he can't make his body language right. So he doesn't.
He gives Ravio the little things instead.
He gives gifts of ceramics, handmade and carved with flowers and apples and bees. He gives advice, using his limited ability to be gentle to help Ravio understand things he doesn't always get on his own. He gives affection, letting Ravio wear his clothes and hold his hand and cry on him whenever he needs. He can't express himself through words, so he will express himself through care.
It's in the little things. That's where all love is.
This is different from how Legend wanted his day to go. He was heading back to his spot at camp after he and some others got their mail. He had opened a letter from Ravio and started to read it. The letter was going well for the first few parts but when Legend reached a certain part his heart dropped.
Stopping dead in his tracks, he stared at that singular part for long enough that it caught the attention of others.
“You alright there, Vet?” Twilight asked him. He was too far away from where he stood. Twilight took notice of the purple sigil on the letter, “What, did Ravio send you another sappy letter?”
The others in the camp were starting to grow a tad concerned when the veteran still didn’t reply. Silence was odd to see on Legend, and this silence wasn’t just him not talking. No, this silence was from being too stunned to speak.
Eventually, Legend shook his head slowly, “No… In two days, it’ll be…” Legend didn’t finish his sentence. All he did was shove the letter in his face and groan in annoyance and exhaustion.
“It’ll be what?” Time spoke up. The camp had a bunch of nosey and curious heroes awaiting an answer. And most of these heroes were not patient.
Huffing, he crossed his arms and looked away from everyone, “In two days it’ll be me and Ravio’s three year anniversary.” After that, the chain turned into a teasing mess, telling him sappy things… you know the drill.
Read the rest on Ao3
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