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“Oh for fucks sake, they were at a tavern?” is the first thing that Four hears someone say in… probably the last couple of hours, muffled through the thin walls of an inn as it is.
The group has been in Warriors’s era for several days at this point, though they’ve spent most of it marching through miles of terrain and clearing out fortress after fortress of foreign, black-blooded monsters. This is the first time that they’ve properly gotten to room somewhere since they were dropped in the middle of his huge, slightly scorched Hyrule Field, right on top of a battalion of soldiers that helpfully pointed them in the right direction. But after a huge success this morning (taking down a fortress with no detrimental injuries) and a slightly-less-lengthy walk back to civilization, everyone’s spirits were high.
Most of the afternoon was spent exploring the massive city and stocking up, which actually becomes a sought-after job in an era as interesting as the captain’s. Four himself had gone off with Wild early in the day, first to pick up ingredients for dinner (which meant he got to pick, and omelets with rice was an easy choice, he was still grieving the fact that they had to skip breakfast that morning), and then to check in with a local blacksmith and get some well-needed maintenance done, both on his weapons and on Wild’s.
After that, though, it had just been a quiet evening full of well-deserved rest. Heroes slowly trickled back to the inn to claim their rooms and unwind for the evening, and though everyone was a little concerned when Twilight and Warriors didn’t join them for dinner, most just shrugged it off and returned to their own activities afterwards—Four included.
Time was worried, though, and claiming that he was familiar enough with the city to traverse it at night (which, Four isn’t going to even try to figure out how that’s possible), he had gone off to collect them.
And, obviously, collect them he did.
Four and Wind make slow eye contact from across the room they were assigned to share—him pulling his eyes up from a book he had thoroughly been lost in and Wind leaning away from the letter he had been scratching out at a small desk in the corner since dinner. They blink at each other for one moment, and then two, and when a panicked noise and heavy thump of boots echoes through the wall again, they immediately launch themselves towards the door with matching grins on their faces.
“-my best friend, you know that?” someone says wetly, and. Oh. Oh goddesses, it’s even better than he could have hoped.
Right, smack-dab in the center of the hallway stands Time, looking about as stone-faced and displeased as ever, and hanging off of him are two grown men who seem to be trying to melt straight into the floor. Sky hovers off to one side, doing his little nervous-flutter with one hand and gripping the elbow of Twilight with the other. Without the support, he clearly would have been halfway to the ground already, but he doesn’t even seem to notice that Sky is there. Instead, his gaze is locked firmly on Warriors, and Warriors looks straight back with an extremely obvious flush to his cheek and slightly misty eyes.
“Great Zephos, they are totally shit-faced-” Wind hisses from over his shoulder, peeking out of the doorway just like Four is. He sounds like he’s having the best day of his life. Maybe he is.
“You’re a good man,” Warriors continues on, entirely oblivious to or uncaring of the audience he has amassed. “Y’ remind me of,” a thick, ugly sniffle, “of m’ own mum.”
“Oh, wow,” Four mutters.
Twilight somehow wiggles a shaky, uncoordinated arm out from Sky’s death-grip and reaches around Time to plant a hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Naw, y’ can’t say that, b’cause now I’m gon’ get all choked up,” Twilight says, sounding all the way to choked up already.
“It’s true!” Warriors adds enthusiastically, obviously unaware of his surroundings as he raises a hand in emphasis and it smacks Time right in the chest. Very, very faintly, Four can see his good eye twitch.
“She’s the strongest person ‘ve ever known. Headstrong, an’... and caring, an’ got an accent like yers when she gets excited. She’d b’ proud to call y’ one of her own.”
“Y’ can’t say that,” Twilight whines, his own flushed face screwing up and tears, actual tears, pooling in his eyes. Sky very obviously tries to pull some of his weight off of Time and shuffle them all further down the hallway, but he doesn’t budge for anything. Time looks like he might fall over at any minute with them.
“Holy shit, I need my Pictobox,” Wind mutters, gobsmacked. Four snorts as he darts back into the room in the direction of his bag. Wild, who has suddenly decided to make an appearance, clearly came to a similar decision. Out of the corner of his eye, Four sees him creep up and duck behind Legend—which, has he been there the whole time? Now that he thinks about it, the first voice was definitely Legend’s. Four is not surprised.
It really doesn’t work well, because the vet is much shorter than him, but he doesn’t let that stop him from very obviously pointing his slate in the direction of the two renowned heroes. Legend doesn’t even seem to care, too busy wearing a vaguely horrified expression but obviously unable to look away, as if the display in front of him is a slow, grinding shipwreck waiting to happen.
“I ain’t never known m’ blood family, ‘cept fer the ol’ man, but that never mattered much t’ me. I got m’ ma and m’ pa, an’ I got th’ kids in Ordon. Now I got you-” he chokes up and sniffles pathetically.
“Awh, y’don’t mean that,” Warriors says, but he brings his own hand up to squeeze the one that rests on his shoulder.
“I do!” Twilight insists. “I get so scared worryin’ ‘bout everyone, but you,” another sniff, “yer safe, n’ strong, n’ reliable. I don’ trust many people, but I trust you. Y’re my brother, ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”
The captain’s eyes widen, completely full of surprise and unwavering adoration. It’s honestly rather sweet. “You’re my brother,” he insists, and he delivers it with the same conviction that he delivers a well-thought-out plan right before going into battle.
“Y’re my brother,” Twilight insists back, and all of a sudden, it’s a competition.
“You’re my brother.”
“No, yer my brother.”
“You’re-”
“Alright!” Legend finally butts in, stepping forward and leaving Wild hissing behind him as he loses his cover. The champion looks back towards his room nervously, and Hyrule, lurking in the doorway—again, has he been there the whole time??—makes an insistent motion with his hand. Wild sighs and goes back to taking pictures.
Wind snorts, obviously having caught onto the interaction himself, and Four is going to turn and grin at him, but then Legend is coming up on Warriors’s side and his attention is captured again. Time gives him a heavy, displeased look that seems to speak a thousand words, but all of them are just took you long enough over and over again.
There are many, many benefits to Four being the height he is, and he could list them all if asked. But perhaps the biggest one is the fact that, in this moment, he can comfortably lean against the doorway and watch the rest of the heroes struggle, knowing he would never be expected to help, and therefore never on the receiving end of a look like that.
Not needing any more encouragement, the vet gives the bracelets on his wrists one dedicated click together, slings one of the captain’s arms over his shoulder, and hefts him up and off of Time. Considering the height difference, it’s quite impressive.
“You can both be each other's brothers,” Legend says dryly, watching as Time shuffles to help Sky support Twilight instead.
As soon as those words leave his mouth, the two half-asleep heroes freeze. Very, very slowly, they turn to look at each other, awe sparking in their eyes.
“What-” Wild starts to ask, but is promptly cut off by drunk slurring.
“Oh my gods,” Warriors realizes, slumping a concerning amount before Legends hefts him up again. “We’re brothers.”
“We’re brothers,” Twilight echoes, a huge, dopey grin overtaking his face.
“Oh, you’re fucking kidding me,” Legend hisses. “The last thing I wanted to do was set them off-”
“We’re brothers-!”
“I think it’s rather sweet,” Sky says with a sickeningly fond grin. He seems entirely immune to the withering glare Legend sends his way.
“Please,” Time speaks for the first time- hah- this whole debacle. “Where can we put them?”
“In here,” Four offers, finally taking pity on the trio stuck wrangling the children. His room is the closest, after all, and by the mildly horrified expression on his face, Legend seems to have realized that Wars is still wearing his chainmail.
Wind makes an enthusiastic noise behind him.
It’s a bit of a slow shuffle, but they eventually manage to dump the two heroes on one of the beds in the room. And they end up on the same bed, obviously, because somewhere between the hallway and the mattress they had linked their arms together and refused to let go for anything, continuing to exchange drunken compliments back and forth. Every once and a while, someone will forget what they’ve already said and repeat the same praise, but the other will similarly forget what they’ve already heard and end up in a mushy pile of tears all the same.
Currently, Legend and Sky are trying to shuffle their outer tunics and chainmail off of them, but it’s made difficult by their actively increasing clinginess. Wind has run off somewhere to grab a few glasses of water, and Time returns from the stairway where, for some reason, their bags had fallen in the grand task of getting the pair up the steps. He drops them at the foot of what Four had once claimed as his bed and steps back to lean against the wall beside him.
For a moment, he mourns the loss of the rare occasion that they find inns with double rooms, but quickly moves on when another slurred you’re so pretty and I love you comes from one of the incredibly plastered heroes in front of him.
“I didn’t know the captain was such an ugly crier,” Four points out mildly, crossing his arms as he continues to watch chaos unfold. Twilight has now wrapped himself up in Wars’s scarf, and Wars is making a dedicated effort to bury himself in blankets despite the pauldron still loosely connected to his shoulder.
He thinks his book has ended up wedged somewhere underneath them at this point, but he’s not about to risk looking for it. This is plenty entertaining, anyways.
“They both are,” Time grumbles, but there is the faintest hint of something fond creeping back into his voice. Four glances up at him, and his expression has softened in a way that Four isn’t sure how to describe.
“...I have to ask,” Four chances, sensing a possibly safe window to do so. “Were they doing that the entire time?”
Immediately, Time’s good mood dies, and his pained expression returns. He glares ahead for a moment, before sighing so deep that Four is worried he’ll bust a lung.
“It was a twenty minute walk,” he says mournfully.
“Oh, Golden Goddesses.”