I’m a day late for sickfic day of Raivoli week but simply could not pass up that prompt. Read it here or on Ao3!
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Link frowned, sitting up in bed. Something was off.
No one bustled around his tiny little single room cottage. The shutters on all the windows remained closed. No lanterns lit the dark room. Only the dim glow of last night’s embers in the hearth and morning sunlight peeking around the edges of the shutters provided any light to see by.
Ravio wasn’t up. Strange. Most mornings he beat Link to waking.
In the darkness, someone sniffed.
Link turned to the lump under the covers next to him.
They’d been sharing a bed for a few weeks now, whenever Link wasn’t stuck in the depths of some dungeon. It still felt strange, but less strange than making Ravio spread a bedroll out on the hard floor while Link himself enjoyed a lumpy but soft mattress.
Another quiet sniffle. Crying? The thought made Link’s stomach curl uncomfortably. But no, this time it was followed by a light cough and a soft, miserable little noise.
“Mister Hero?” Ravio whispered. He sounded stuffy and about as pathetic as Link had ever heard him. The times he’d talked his way into Link’s house and then his bed both included. “Are you awake?”
Ravio still insisted on covering his face, even at night. At least he took off the hood, turning his back to Link for long enough to cover both hair and ears with a wrap and an oversized, brilliantly purple sleeping mask to dwarf most of the rest of his features. The bunny hood lay in a heap on the floor; usually he woke before Link to put it on.
Covered eyes turned towards Link in the darkness. Was it his imagination that the very tip of the nose just barely visible under the lower edge of the mask looked a little red?
“I’m awake,” he whispered back.
“Mister Hero, I feel terribly unwell,” Ravio moaned, laying on the drama now that he knew he had an audience. Link rolled his eyes, secure in the knowledge that it would remain unseen. “I think I need a healing potion. Maybe a fairy? I definitely need a fairy. Oh, but what if there aren’t any? You’ll take care of Sheerow, won’t you? I - what are you doing?”
Between the turban and the sleeping mask, a sliver of Ravio’s forehead remained exposed to open air. The palm of Link’s hand immediately started to feel a little sweaty, but Link knew perfectly well that wasn’t because of Ravio.
“Checking for fever,” he said as casually as he could, pulling his hand back. The skin seemed to tingle with the remembered warmth of Ravio’s skin. It was the normal amount of warmth. “You don’t have one.”
“I can’t possibly open the shop today,” Ravio bemoaned. He coughed again. Link listened carefully, but it sounded dry, no rattling of phlegm. He sounded stuffy, yes, but he hadn’t yet coughed himself hoarse. “I can’t talk to people like this! An entire day of lost profits!”
Link wasn’t impressed. “It’s just a cold. I’m renting your entire stock. And if I want to buy something, you don’t need to open the shop for me. I live here.” He still felt the need to remind Ravio of that from time to time.
Ravio’s hands flailed blindly. Link jerked his head back to avoid getting smacked in the nose. “I get other customers! One of them still has the sand rod!” Ravio declared with such a loudly dramatic hiss that he set himself into a true coughing fit, the first Link had heard from him that morning. Link grabbed his hand and pulled him to sit upright, patting his back until the fit passed.
“I’ll make you some tea,” he decided. The audible dryness in his throat did sound painful, and the steam would be good for his sinuses.
He heard the whisper of fabric across the floor as soon as he headed towards the kitchen and kept his head politely turned away while Ravio swapped his sleeping mask for the hood he could, theoretically, see out of.
“And breakfast?” Ravio added hopefully, clogged nose adding to the overall air of pathetic neediness.
“Don’t push your luck.”
But once he had the kettle on, Link pulled out a pan and some eggs. Ravio nursed him back to health a time or two, after all; that was how they met. He could afford to return the favor.
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(Brought to you by the headcanon that Ravio gets terribly dramatic over the mildest of colds and is the most demanding patient he can possibly be.)
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