#flump

He swallows, his throat all tightness. "Yes, Princess?"

Her fingers find his wrist. A benign enough gesture, but he knows better. Her fingertips find his pulse, lay cool and flat against overheated skin as she turns him around with it. And if she had any doubts, he's sure the expression on his face gives him away.

"You really should've stayed on the ground," she chides him.

"I'm fine."

"You're running a fever."

He fidgets, remembering with a shudder the way the biting winds aboard Vah Medoh seemed to draw the life right out of him and cast it overboard. He murmurs again, "I'm fine."

She wears a sad, incredulous smile at him, fingers brushing at his bangs—ghosting gently against skin, the way they had in Eldin just a few days before. Maybe a sign of affection, maybe a way to gauge his temperature. Either way it makes him shiver.

"Remember that fine line we talked about?"

The room is tilting, and his equilibrium is shot, and he's not even sure if it's from her fingers lingering on his wrist or the fever. He has to swallow again, blink some balance back into the world, before he says, "I didn't want you to have to go up alone."

"I wouldn't have been alone. I had Revali."

"Mmf," he grunts, and when her smile starts to grow he decides it's in his best interests to change the subject. "I'll go to bed," he promises.

"Your hut is three levels down," she scoffs. "You'll probably pass out half way down and fall headlong the rest of the way, and then I'll have no appointed knight at all. I'm surprised you haven't keeled over already."

She turns before he can object, piling extra blankets and pillows on the floor near the firepit. There’s a certain logic to her arguments. An appealing, hazy, attractive sort of logic. But he’s also sure there are a few important people who wouldn’t be pleased to know he had spent the night in her room. The king, for example. Though at the moment he can’t exactly remember why his opinion matters. But he’s fairly sure it does.

She says, when he hasn’t moved and he still seems to need convincing, “You clearly can’t be trusted with your own well being. I just want to see you safely through the night. Please?”

He takes a breath, not sure if he means to tell her that he’ll be fine on his own or that her offer sounds lovely and he’d been delighted to accept, but either way she interrupts, anticipating a rebuttal.

“I could make it an order.”

“All right,” he says before she can threaten him anymore, taking the first uneasy steps toward the middle of the room. “All right.”

She turns, satisfied, and he tries to lower himself as steadily as possible into the small nest she’s built. His legs give out half way down and his knees hit the ground, his hands flying out to catch himself, and he crawls the last few inches to the soft center of the pile.

He finally admits, staring at the floor, “My head is pounding.”

“I’m not surprised.” Her hands alight on his shoulders, guiding him, turning him on his side and then easing his head down. He’s expecting a pillow, so it’s startling when he finds himself in her lap. But he’s too weak to argue, for more reasons than one. She clucks her tongue at him, dabbing gently at his neck and temple with a moist cloth. “You’re burning up.”

This feels inappropriate, and tending to him like this is beneath her besides. But he tries not to think about it. He stares into the quivering fire, letting his head drift aimlessly towards other thoughts: how nice it feels, how long it’s been since he’s had someone care for him like this. It was his mother last, probably, though he can’t remember when. Years, now. He must’ve been something like...

Well. It was before the sword, anyway.

“Sorry,” he whispers, because it’s all he can think to say.

She puffs a derisive laugh. “What are you sorry for?”

He pinches his eyes shut, an awful chill wracking him from head to toe. It’s going to be a long night. He can’t think of a reason—or at least, a way to say what he means. So he doesn’t answer. That’s probably treasonous. But she doesn’t seem to mind.

“We’ve got to look out for each other,” she says quietly, almost ruminative.

It makes something warm in his chest. It reminds him of the night they camped in the canyon between Gerudo and Hyrule Field, when she’d asked him why he was so quiet, and how patiently she’d listened while he dredged up bits of an answer. That front that you put on for everyone else... you don’t need to with me, she’d said.

She’ll probably never know how much that meant.

“Princess,” he murmurs, not quite in his right mind and aching all over. She brushes his bangs back, peers down at him with an arched brow, expectant, until he corrects, “Zelda.”

Her expression softens approvingly, and she dabs the cloth in the bowl again and lays it against his forehead. He watches her out of heavy-lidded eyes, dizzy and prickling and hot. Utterly miserable. Utterly content.

“Thank you.”