Chapter Text
Many things in this strange country are predictable. The sun, though in a strange motion, follows a sure, repetitive path day by day by day. The day is hot, and the night is cold. Even the weather, after a few weeks, starts to arrange itself into a pattern in Ravio’s mind. A peculiar tingling feeling in the air, a sharpness to the way the wind smells, and he knows there will be rain.
The people, too, are easy, after a time. Different than Lolians, sure, with a strange culture, and strange food and strange clothes and manners that he cannot seem to make sense of no matter how hard he tries; and by Lolia, does he try—
Wait… what was he saying?
Yes. Right. The people. The Hylians.
Despite all of their differences to the populace of Ravio’s own home world, the people of Hyrule are really just that at the end of the day: people. And people are predictable , once he takes the time to figure them out. Ravio learns the little secret rules of Hyrulean society over time, with careful practice. He gets good at it, even. By the end of his first year in his new country, he is pretty consistently accurate with his private predictions of how people will react to things he does, the words that he chooses.
Link, of course, is an exception to this fact.
Nothing that that man does has ever— ever —made a single rupee of sense.
Not the time when (barely an hour after saving two entire worlds) Link had just looked at him like Ravio was an idiot when he wondered out loud where he was going to live, being stuck in Hyrule permanently and all.
Or not when he just… handed Ravio a marriage contract, for Lolia’s love.
(That was a particularly confusing conversation. Even for one involving Mister Hero. It was all circles and loops and statements like ‘practical matters’ and ‘you shouldn’t lose your home when I die’ and - )
Ravio did not enjoy that conversation. He didn’t understand that conversation. In fact, that conversation caused him severe emotional and psychological distress.
…he did sign the papers, though. Link, damn him, had a point. About practical matters.
Like taxes! And Ravio’s dashing Hero’s tax-exempt status, and how if they were married filing jointly then said tax-exempt status would also apply to Ravio’s income, and well…
They get married. For tax benefits. And to ‘streamline Link’s will’ when he ‘inevitably fucks up in a Dungeon.’
Ravio has no fucking idea where to even begin with that one, but he rolls with it. Link is unpredictable, after all. He does things like ask his other self from another reality to marry him— without actually asking more so just telling —and then doesn’t seem to pick up on any sort of cues when his husband starts actually flirting with him.
Why would he? Link is the Hero of Courage, and what really is courage if not foolishness by a softer name?
…Where was he going with this?
Right! Mister Hero not making sense.
Link didn’t make sense when he just packed a bag one day and threw on his adventuring clothes, mumbling something about ‘needing to clear his head’ and ‘being sick to death of his house’ and all but running out the door with barely a ‘be back soon.’
He doesn’t make much sense in his letters home, which come as a surprise but do come, thank Lolia. Still, they’re practically nonsense. Something about a country called Hytopia, a cursed jumpsuit, and Princess in trouble.
Ravio tries to put whatever situation his (landlord? Best friend? Benefactor?) husband has managed to get himself into out of his mind, and focus on the things that do make sense. Like keeping an eye on Mister Hero’s trees. And trying to start his business back up from scratch. And not thinking about how he has somehow ended up married to the person he loves most in two worlds and they haven’t even talked about it.
Good thing Ravio has always been so good at compartmentalization.
His stock is nearly empty, and that is a real problem. A practical problem. A problem with a Goddess-damned solution, even. And well, if Link is going to be galavanting around foreign nations and sending him letters that are so confusing that they read like three people writing at once, then Ravio will do his best to keep that person and those feelings and the entire situation out of his mind.
It’s not like he can do anything, he thinks to himself, using his pliers as a fidget more than a tool as he stares down at a pile of materials with the potential to be a dozen possible items. It’s not like he can help Mister Hero, out there in the world.
The thought hits him (ironically enough) like lightning, sudden and sharp, and his hands start to move.
It takes him only seconds to decide on a ring. His Hero favors them, after all, and has quite the collection already. A ring is something that Link would like, that he would use, that he would find easy to keep on him.
After that is… harder. He isn’t sure what it is it should do. After all, Link has his Heart Rings and ones with heat and cold resistance, and that bracelet Ravio already gave him. He has fire rods and magic rods and a rod that changes the seasons. He bought out nearly every piece of merchandise Ravio brought with him to Hyrule in the first place, not to mention the rather extensive collection he already possessed.
He nearly drops the entire idea, until lightning strikes again.
Literally, this time.
A summer storm (common, or so he has been told) tears through the valley. The sky is ripped apart by bolts of angry electric power, the windows shaking violently in their frames.
Ravio passes the storm in tense silence, sorting through his small collection of emeralds, trying to examine the cut of them without staring deep enough to see himself reflected back. It’s terrifyingly easy to substitute Link’s face for his own in his mind when he sees his reflection like that, in the harsh flashes of light cast through those windows.
He works fast that day. Too fast. The ring is finished in minutes, technically perfect and yet still nowhere near enough.
Ravio strokes Sheerow’s back with the utmost gentleness, his heart aching at the way the bird tries so hard to nest in his scarf in response to the thunder claps.
It reminds him of Link, the small-animal-like panic in response to the storm. He tries not to think about the implications as to why that would be, and leaves his project well enough alone. It was a silly sentimental idea, after all.
Yet he keeps… coming back to it.
Ravio swaps out the band, on a bright sunny morning, trading in the more enchantment-carrying gold for a silver that he thinks would look better against the green of the stone. He gets up in the middle of the night that same day and changes it back. After all, Link (unpredictable as he may be) tends to prefer function over form.
…He’s swapped out the emerald itself eight times when the trees start changing colors. Oranges and reds in such a vibrancy that he wastes a day just staring at them all, loses an entire day of his life to watching where green ought to be and wondering where it is that the colors have even come from.
Mister Hero’s next letter makes even less sense, full of plural pronouns like ‘we miss you’ and ‘we’re nearly finished’ and ‘we really ought to stop getting ourselves into these situations, huh?’
Ravio has no idea who ‘we’ is, but he is inclined to agree with the sentiment of the last point. The ring’s setting gives him trouble that night. The prongs are too big and it looks ugly, and then they are far too delicate and Mister Hero will break the damn thing in seconds and then -
He really is rambling now. None of this is relevant.
What is relevant (sorely, painfully relevant) is that months after the day Link stormed out of the door with no warning, Ravio carefully considers what might be the best work he’s ever done. It’s nothing fancy, like a sand rod. It isn’t elaborate, like a tornado rod. No, it’s…
It’s gold and rupee green and plain and simple if you merely look at it and it is dripping with so much magic that holding it in his bare hand for too long makes him nearly nauseous.
It’s perfect.
Of course, in a
predictably
unpredictable fashion, it’s the very next day that Link stumbles through the door.