Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Nocturne watched his brother waiting and his own mind bled.

He did not believe he'd ever harmed a sibling like that before, even before the Mask or before he ever went to Ikana. Aevum's teasing felt pale in comparison; his attempt on her life only a few years ago had been stopped before he ever drew blood. This—This was an ache in his lungs that did not drop away just because Oceanis sat, healthy and fine, legs crossed on his bed and a sad smile on his face.

He did not want to be the cause of his brother's pain. He didn't want to be his downfall, despite how ridiculous the thought was. He'd kept his sword out of reach, thank the stars, but that was as much deliberate as an accident of how close they'd been: there was no room to swing a sword when they were tangled in bed.

A deliberate choice too, he knew. While his brother had not put it into words, the fact of being in his room, in a bed was… different. Easier to remember it wasn't battle.

It would be easier if his lungs did not burn, nor his hands shake just because Oceanis put his fucking mouth on his ear.

"Come back," Oceanis called. "You are working yourself up more for no reason."

"I hurt you. You said we would stop—"

"—until you had calmed down again. This is not you calming down." When Nocturne turned to argue, Oceanis spoke again. "You said you trusted me."

The weight of power in his voice felt—calming. It was a hand on his shoulder when Oceanis was refusing to stand, to rise and meet him while he paced back and forth across his room, working himself up for what purpose?

Had he meant it when he told Oceanis to take charge of him or not? He hated it—hated the thought, hated laying down and taking it…

…but he hated feeling unstable and violent, more.

They'd made some progress. He ground his teeth and walked back to the bed, unhappy with every option before him until he took Oceanis' hand and felt the water pass through him again. It didn't leave, this time, not right away, and he dropped next to his brother on his side and closed his eyes as it sat in his veins and let him feel…

It wasn't exactly safe; it felt contained, like armour on his skin, or like nothing could reach him but also like he was held and restrained without violence. It felt like his brother, and he turned his hand and wound fingers through Oceanis' own, wishing the feeling could just stay.

It didn't, and he sighed in grief as it let him go. "Why won't you leave that? If I can not feel…"

"Mortals do that to each other, sometimes," Oceanis said, and there was a darkness to his voice Nocturne rarely heard: it was anger. "It can be used to enhance pleasure, but sometimes—quite often it is not. When you turn off another person's ability to retaliate or reason, great harm can be done without any ability to stop it. The memory after is like what you described from the nightmares you reported: pain, panic, fear with no context. It would not be better for you right now. You aren't here to simply experience pleasure for its own sake, but to practice control."

And he had to have his reason—however capricious it currently was—to do that. Nocturne buried his face in the bedding again and Oceanis simply turned to touch him again. At least he had listened to him about not asking; if he had to answer, over and over, he felt sure he'd be sick long before this point. As it was, it was slowly getting more pleasant. His brother's fingers trailing across back and shoulders were a shiver on his sweaty skin (why was he sweating? He hadn't exerted himself in a long while.)

The touch trailed up towards his neck and into his hair, and Oceanis picked up his braid and began to unravel it. And as he worked, hands brushing his back and edging closer to his scalp, he kept talking.

"I can use it intermittently to help, because what it does is pull you back down after you get worked up and stressed. You and I both know you could resist it and make me stop if you chose to do so, so it's not actually suppressing your ability to retaliate if I truly did something unforgivable to you—it works as a, hrm. A pause, between rounds."

"Rounds," Nocturne said, and laughed. "Like sparring."

It would be less funny had it felt less true: actually sparring for fun felt invigorating. Now, it felt like rounds of live battle wearing him down, a fight that picked up suddenly as Oceanis buried his fingers in his hair at his scalp. It wasn't—wasn't unpleasant. There was the same shivering heat he'd felt on his back, but there was a brush of finger against ear that set his heart racing and a low growl in his throat.

But he stayed down, and Oceanis pulled fingers through his hair and splayed it out across his back before doing the same movement—with the same, deliberate brush against his ears—again. By the third time, he managed to weather it with a single, hard exhale and his brother stopped with one hand on his waist.

"Better?"

Nocturne grumbled into the bedclothes and turned his head away with a sigh. Oceanis just laughed softly and dropped down behind him, his hand sliding around to his stomach once again then down to the crease of his thigh. Nocturne took a sharp breath in and let it out hard.

He'd braced himself for the kiss on his shoulder this time, breath shallow in his nose. Then—

Nocturne had expected a return to his ear. He hadn't expected teeth.

He hissed out an exhale and rolled over, knocking his brother onto his back and twisting free. Oceanis was—thank and curse the Goddesses both—laughing.

"You bit me!"

"I wondered how you'd take that."

"Why did you bite me?"

"Some people like it! I was curious. You seem like you'd rather a fight than stay idle…"

A fight. It sounded like relief and he grabbed his brother and went for a grapple instead. Oceanis twisted out of his hands and lunged at him instead, taking him down to his back only to fumble (almost certainly on purpose) and get slammed to the bed under him instead a moment later. Oceanis took a long slow breath out and just smiled, soft with clear affection.

"Do you feel better now?"

Nocturne exhaled hard out his nose and dropped back with a sigh. "Yes," he admitted. He sank off his brother to one side and, when Oceanis sat up and pushed gently on his chest he let him put him back down on the bed, an unfamiliar shiver going down his chest. It hit low, between an ache and lump in his throat and his brother paused on his side next to him. His hand wandered and paused, circling on his stomach.

"Well! I think you did like that."

"Liked what?"

Oceanis trailed his fingers just a little lower and Nocturne felt his body react in much more minute detail. There was a simultaneous drop and flush: brief fear and memory, of other touch dropping that low on his stomach, and the pure physiology of suddenly being aware of his own pleasure. Aware of his erection in response to it. Normally it was something he ignored: the awareness a fleeting thing. He knew his body and how it worked, and being aroused was not unusual. Blood pounding in his veins tended to find its way to a variety of places.

But normally this particular one was ignored.

Normally, there was not a hand tracing the white hair on his lower stomach, a hand he knew might reach down and touch him. His breath caught with fear not of the touch but of his own reaction to it and he twisted away from Oceanis before he could go any further with a growled curse.

"Brother?"

"I do not want to hurt you," Nocturne hissed. "I don't—doing you serious harm once was bad enough. If I did it again…"

Oceanis was silent for a few moments longer before he spoke. "I could use physical means to restrain you? It will not be a true bondage, just mere rope but if that could help you feel… safer around me, we can try."

Nocturne sat up and turned in place to shoot his brother another bewildered stare. His brother's pale gaze met his own, blue hair rumpled from their wrestling on the bed. He was clearly serious, and Nocturne made a bemused noise in his throat.

"Do you also use rope on mortals?"

"More often I let them use it on me. Some do actually get up the courage to ask to manhandle me themselves! While I could tie them up and have, it's not my usual preference but…" He hesitated, his eyes soft. "Some do like it for feeling safer around partners. You will have to not break it, but it can be a… reminder. A step between."

Between the urge to commit violence and doing it, Nocturne supposed. He wasn't sure he liked it. Being willingly bound… But Majora had not tied him with rope on a bed. It had required its lieutenant demons to hold him down, and even that had very nearly failed before it damaged his body past function. This would not be anything like that. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

"I can cut the ropes at any time, and will if you ask me to release you." Oceanis said.

He still hadn't reached out to touch him again and that was what made Nocturne grimace and nod, his hair loose over his shoulder.

"We will do that."

Then he had to sit through it. He could keep his breath even, his eyes calm as his brother brought out rope (comfortable rope, dyed brilliant blue) and told him to kneel on the bed, hands behind his back.

It was something else entirely, though, to tolerate feeling it wrap around his forearms, binding them together and around his chest, pinning his upper arms to his sides. The rounds of rope were more comfortable than he expected, the style clearly deliberate and not one that was haphazard or quick but seemed almost artistic. He tried to place it, and Oceanis laughed softly.

"Its the best way I've found to do ties that do no harm. I thought, especially for you, something secure but that feels much more ornamental would help. More layers will mean it requires more force to actually get the leverage to break it, without feeling overwhelming. It can be quite beautiful to see."

"Aren't I already pretty enough?" Nocturne retorted but he didn't really mean it. His beauty was an indifferent thing to him. "You hardly need to make it look nice."

Oceanis tugged on the ropes, pulling his body back in a way that felt, for a moment, deeply unpleasant. His jaw ached. He swallowed hard, licking his lips as he swallowed, over and over, until the tension eased and he could let his head drop forward again, struggling against something unknown.

His brother was talking, voice still level and calm as he finished wrapping the ropes into place and tied it off. He was… he was saying something about the material, well-cared for hemp rope and the dye was indigo and it didn't matter and did because he knew his voice, and when he turned at all towards him, Oceanis moved until he was sitting in his line of sight, blue hair sliding in the air like waves.

"Brother?" he said.

"…It's fine. I don't know what set that off."

"It's okay. You did not struggle, so I assumed you would recover in time. Have you?"

"Yes." He shifted again, but his arms were unnervingly secure. Oceanis was right, it would take concerted effort to free himself and that was in this moment some kind of relief. He didn't even feel unsafe: he knew where he was, knew the temple and lands surrounding them were both secure.

And, with his mind clear, he trusted Oceanis enough he leaned forward and let his head drop against his brother's chest. Oceanis' hand came up behind his neck and stayed high, stroking his neck and down his shoulder to the top of the ropes and back, a languid, slow touch across his skin.

It felt like everything to Oceanis to take his brother's weight against his chest. Nocturne was strangely quiet against him. The sight held a past horror all its own due to seeing his first drop into that horrible memory of Majora robbing him of his freedom and nearly his life.

But this was not that. He could hear and feel Nocturne's (still too fast; too harsh) breathing against his neck, see his legs shift and feel the muscles testing the ropes and easing, over and over and over as he settled into place. It was a stillness born of desire, not damage done and Oceanis' throat hurt with the depth of his affection.

This was his brother; his brother who trusted him (wanted him) to take care of him. He buried his fingers in Nocturne's white hair at the base of his scalp, luxuriating quietly in how delicate the strands were. His own hair moved like water; Nocturne's was rigidly straight and tidy at almost all times, like sometimes-translucent liquid light. It glided over his fingers and he took a risk and reached up again to stroke two fingers down the back of Nocturne's ear.

The sudden tension was glaring. His brother's back went rigid, but he felt him swallow and subside against him seconds later with a low grumble in his throat like a dog settling in its bed. Oceanis let his hand trail up his ear and back down to the nape of his neck and scratched his scalp as the thrill of success burned pleasantly in his heart.

"That's much better," he said, his voice quiet. "I'm glad."

Nocturne made some small sound, but he was still quiet in his arms—quieter than before, even, and when Oceanis rolled his brother's earring in his fingers Nocturne managed to stay completely still. With his own heart pounding in his chest, Oceanis kissed his brother's hair and lay down, tucking himself against his brother's back and still hands as he brushed white hair from his face.

"Nocturne," he said, and bright, white eyes opened to look up at him readily. "Good. Rest, I'll take care of you."

He got a shallow nod, and then Nocturne's head dropped down against the bed gently, his whole body at such ease he didn't think he'd ever seen from his brother before. It wasn't the first time he'd seen this reaction to a tie: it was one reason many of his partners liked it, and Oceanis himself had felt something close to it a few times with people he felt a strong camaraderie with.

He just hadn't expected it from Nocturne. It was a level of trust he hadn't put into words (he wasn't sure he could) and it pulled on things lower and deeper than any physical touch could.

Oceanis murmured words as he let his hands wander, tracing the bottom edge of the ropes on Nocturne's chest and down his stomach, to each thigh and then slowly circling the places where his brother had flinched from his touch before into the smooth white hair between his legs and his erection at the center.

Nocturne's stillness wasn't perfect. He was breathing hard, arms shifting against the rope and legs curling as Oceanis' touch wandered, but there were no sudden jerks, no serious attempts to break his bonds. He shifted between gasps and half-formed growls until Oceanis let his fingers trail up the bottom edge of his cock and into the softer skin of his scrotum below… areas he knew his brother did not necessarily enjoy but which had been so abused…

The shivering in his arms grew stronger. Nocturne pulled gently away, teeth bared in silence, and Oceanis paused and kissed his shoulder—but he didn't remove his hand.

"It's alright. You asked me to do this. You know I won't hurt you, Brother, don't you?"

Nocturne cleared his throat, the sound half a growl, then let his breath out all at once. "Yes."

Oceanis flattened his hand, half-gripping his brother's body still, thumb around the base of his cock and fingers threaded over his scrotum—not a grab, but still holding him, still there. "This is what we came here to do."

Nocturne twisted until his ear pressed across Oceanis' face, a touch he certainly hadn't initiated but which still got a high, nearly-panicked whine from his throat before Nocturne managed to calm himself. He was still so hard he must be aching from it but, as Oceanis had thought, fear wasn't a deterrent to arousal in someone so immersed in battle.

Perhaps giving him the tie to fight had helped, because Nocturne slowly subsided in his hands again, his captured palm pressed up against Oceanis' chest and his bright (reassuringly bright) eyes slipped closed. He watched him lick pale lips, cheeks still flushed, and finally seem calm.

Nocturne murmured something. He pushed his head back against Oceanis' neck behind him, that sensitive ear pressed into his skin. Oceanis hummed his own song, his Name song and stayed idle, propped on one elbow as he let his other hand start moving, slowly at first, then wandering across that tender skin.

He got several noises from his brother at that. It was a fascinating result, to listen and feel Nocturne come undone in his arms in a way he'd never imagined. He let his hand wander, knowing from experience the many ways mortals enjoyed being touched (a dance around the crown, trailing touch along the bottom of the shaft, sensitive skin behind the scrotum and around it and back again—) and Nocturne stayed half-limp in his arms, the constant back and forth of trying to fight him muted within a few rounds of rope.

Muted, not by the rope itself but by what it meant: the desire not to hurt him.

The desire to trust.

Oceanis has no interest whatsoever in his own pleasure tonight. This wasn't about him; it was about Nocturne and his brother's need to master his body and his reactions again. He watched now, as his brother dropped his guard and shivered, panting under his touch as the panic remained at bay and frowned.

He didn't want Nocturne tied up the whole time. He wanted him to think—and, unfortunately for him, he knew that this wasn't the only way his brother had been harmed. He pulled his hand away from Nocturne's groin, to a low whimper he held fondly in mind, and began to unwind the rope from his brother's back.

He had to pull him up to lay seated against his chest before Nocturne even roused enough to realize what he was doing.

"…Are we done?" His voice was thick with near sleep, the sound shivering with crickets that made Oceanis' own arms tremble.

"Not quite. But I want your hands free for the next part."

"But…"

"You are calm enough."

He wasn't sure if Nocturne believed him, or if he simply obeyed. He was fighting his own feelings the whole time already, still in a pleasant surprise at his brother's reaction to the tie. He hadn't expected him to relax into it so deeply. Still, it didn't make his goal harder—quite the opposite. He dumped the rope aside and dropped Nocturne onto his back then, shifting himself to kneel between his legs on the bed.

Slitted white eyes stared down at him, his brother's face soft with ease. His hair pooled beneath his neck, the colour quite literally glowing in the room so bright Oceanis could almost forget it was night. They had not bothered with any torches; darkness was a dear friend to them both. He wondered if those looking in the windows saw his glow and fought down a smile.

"What is it?" Nocturne asked.

"Nothing. Give me your hand?"

Nocturne reached down, and Oceanis moved it into his hair.

"Keep your grip here," he said. "So you remember it's me."

"Remember—?" Nocturne asked.

Oceanis had been planning to just move forward on the task but as he really looked at what was before him, he was immediately struck by something he hadn't seriously thought about before: he was used to mortal lovers, with completely expected anatomy for their size. While Nocturne's erection was hardly large for a deity, he was very much sized for his height.

That was new. That was unexpected. He stared at it briefly and the wait was long enough Nocturne roused from the deep relaxation and pushed himself up on one elbow, even as his eyes stayed low.

"What is it?"

"I just hadn't appreciated what it meant to be faced with an erection that might actually fill my mouth before."

"You're going to—Of course you are." Nocturne groaned and jerked lightly on his hair. "Stop staring at my cock and get on with it."

There was a moment where Oceanis was tempted to comment on his brother's language, colloquial words that he rarely used around his son or Aevum, but a look up at his shaking breath and half-closed eyes stopped the tease in its tracks and he bent instead to kiss his brother's hip (Nocturne gasped at the touch, his free hand twisting in the bedclothes) then the soft skin below his navel. Then he pulled his cock gently out and kissed the root.

Nocturne's breath had gone back to the high gasping speed at the beginning of the tie. His body trembled with arousal at his touch, an overwhelming sensation Oceanis remembered and he let himself feel it on his skin like the shine of moonlight over the waves. His brother was a force to be reckoned with, but the mirror of night inside his temple and the night outside was hard to distinguish one from the other in this moment.

It was both parts his brother, and Oceanis pulled back and gently took his crown in his mouth to a thready gasp of pleasure. The hand in his hair twisted, then pulled hard and Oceanis dropped a bit faster than he'd meant to down his shaft.

He expected to spend a bit more time on it; expected to need to do work.

He'd forgotten how quickly he'd been overcome that first time himself.

He was distantly aware he was kneeling on his bed, mouth moving some on his brother's body and his hand in his hair. He could still focus on that, could feel the physical reaction in his mouth of his partner's muscles clenching violently and legs moving at his side. He could feel Nocturne's hand pulling on his hair—

—but that wasn't the strongest pull in that room, not anymore. Not by far.

The pull started, and the room dropped into sudden darkness at the same moment. The pull hit suddenly, low in his chest, something he realized he was always aware of and always present but never had it felt so hard in his life. The pull tugged on every wave of every sea and every ocean that made up his form across the globe. It was a deep pull, heavy like a hand far larger than the one in his hair—a hand larger than all the waters, deep as they might go. The darkness was nothing compared to the way he felt himself spread wide as if far more of his body was on his brother's cock than just his mouth and that pull demanded every scrap of his attention.

Oceanis was used to movement in his aspect. There was never a true lack of movement except in the deepest pools of brine, or the deadest moments on the surface, and even those were not a permanent state. His waters circulated up and down and around, driven by gradients of salt and heat that warmed some waters and froze others: that warmed lands and capped the poles with ice. He was used to the plunge into the darkest water, as the burden of salt became too much under evaporation and dropped waters thick with sediment into the depths, a dance he once knew with his sister alive—he was the trenches and shape of the ocean floor that channeled currents to speed up, spread out and slow down—

But that movement paled next to his sudden, visceral awareness of just what it meant to feel the pull of the moon. Tides were a daily occurrence flowing around the world. Normally the pull was negligible, a mild familiar moment of meeting his brother's eyes, no matter that he could have pointed to the moon in the sky at any moment, from anywhere in the world. Its presence was as familiar to him as that of the sun.

It had never before been a demand. Never dragged him from the waters to the black depths of the sky that spread wide overhead, a darkness full of distant, twinkling stars so much like a mirror of his deepest depths. It wrapped around him like an arm around his shoulders (was that happening in truth? He thought it might be, movement up from his brother's waist to his chest as he came undone) and that feeling of water rushing towards the sky from the tips of crashing waves. A brush of skin on skin brought him from a total negligence of his own need to a completion of his own, body pressed to warm skin under his legs.

The intense pleasure shared dropped him back into a familiar, pressing darkness of deep water and Nocturne dropped with him.

It wasn't an unfamiliar place for Nocturne: he'd travelled deep beneath the oceans many times on a Hunt or to cover long distances in the past at need. There was a comforting familiarity to it, but this felt different. It felt like the arms now wrapped around his chest as Oceanis dropped on top of him in bed expanded into a journey down layers of pressure and sapped heat; it carried with it a precise awareness of that temperature, of its salinity and other dissolved material, a burden as varied as his own awareness of the thin atmosphere that separated the planet from the emptiness of the true, distant sky. Nocturne felt every night each gaze that oriented itself to the stars and moon, but his brother…

Oceanis' realm was one of constant movement. The waters tug and pulled, dancing back and forth as they were teased by the winds above and battered by the wild surface below. That deep ocean floor was pockets of heat and cold, pools of brine and seething hot volcanic vents, a pattern that he had once learned as danger but now felt as merely the scaffolding of his brother's distant shape, each teeming with its own life.

The deep sea was a place as dark as his own sky, lit by a hundred thousand brilliant lights but here every one of those bright spots was alive. It was a shock to feel himself drowning so deep in his brother's presence, but it was a comfort to know him as Oceanis held him in the aftershocks of shaking limbs and pleasure. He felt lights flaring along his skin, darkness from a dimmed moon and shining scarves of light at the edges of the world—familiar things, bounded by the slow drift from the ocean's depths towards the surface, light coming back as the waters gave way from benthic chill to warm, bright laughter and the nighttime life of reefs not that far from shore.

Slowly, he found himself settling back inside his own body. The darkness of an eclipse slid away and the moon shone bright and full into their room. The waves on shore began to fade from his awareness as Oceanis became solid once more in his arms, laying halfway across his chest with bright eyes staring into his own.

It was an odd feeling, Nocturne supposed. He felt… good. The pleasure of his brother's hands and mouth on his body had surprisingly overcome the memories of the past, and he shivered again at the now much stronger memory of leaning into that touch rather than away. He shivered to know just what it meant, to want the pleasure inflicted upon him. He licked his lips again, still feeling a little diffuse like a nighttime fog kissing the waters below and slowly let that feeling become a smile.

"Brother?" Oceanis said. His hand came up and tucked his hair back behind one ear, and the touch didn't even register until it was done and Oceanis' smile widened. "You look pleased."

"It was nice," he agreed. It was more even than the look under the sea and included the thought and feeling of being tight against his chest for what had felt like so long. Including now, as he lay under his weight and felt no need at all to rise. He let his head drop back and nearly stopped thinking at all until Oceanis moved and he realized there was something actually wet on his stomach.

"Ah, forgive me," Oceanis said. "Let me get that."

Nocturne thought he should sit up, but the urge to just stay down and let his mind drift in the wind was stronger. When was the last time he'd sincerely just let one of the others take over? He wasn't sure he could remember. He didn't think he ever had. No one had been his peer before the fight with Majora, none but Aevum or Hylia and now…

Now, he looked up as Oceanis came closer, a worried look on his face and ran a cloth over his chest and side before he looked up and met his eyes.

"What is it?" Nocturne said.

"Nothing," Oceanis sighed. "Come. You should get dressed, your son will expect us home."

That pulled him together a little, until his body felt solid and under his command once more. He shook himself out and tried to remember what he'd even DONE with his clothes. There seemed to be a wall of some kind between him and the world, one he was sure he could brush away had he wanted to but… didn't. He knew Oceanis was still there and he knew he'd done this in order to achieve some kind of peace. He didn't want it to escape, not so soon.

When he hadn't moved for a minute or so, Oceanis finally just dumped clothes on him with a sigh. "Here. Put this on at least."

The clothes were his brother's: a loose tunic and pants that tied shut, and Nocturne accepted that as simpler than trying to think. Once dressed, he took Oceanis' arm and let him sing them both back to the house and walked, leaning heavily on his shoulder into the house and to his room.

They did not bother with lights; didn't want to disturb anyone. Didn't actually need any other light, Nocturne noted, but couldn't think why. Still, they weren't the most coordinated. Nocturne was distantly aware of a noise but only actually paid attention when Oceanis finally set him down in bed and someone came to the door. He looked up and smiled.

"Link. Did we wake you?"

"Heard something," Link yawned, still obviously half-asleep. "And smelled the ocean."

Oceanis tried not to smile. Really. He knew Link would not appreciate it, although he also had to admit he wasn't sure he'd notice. He pulled down the blankets and murmured to Nocturne to lay down and his brother half-turned towards him, his whole face softening in response to his words before he nodded and went.

Link, fifteen but half-asleep, came to join them without another word, his own eyes soft and drowsy. "So you two really are getting along again?"

"We are," Oceanis said. He lay down at Nocturne's back and pulled up the blankets as father and son settled on the long bed. "We were just sorting a few things out, about what had changed since your father was sealed so long ago."

Link nodded. He tried to look up at Nocturne and ask more but in his still-soft state Nocturne had lost his inhibitions towards affection and pulled the boy against his chest in full. Link squeaked and made a token protest.

"Dad! I'm not a kid!"

Oceanis' coughed and reached down to tap Nocturne's shoulder. "Brother, you're smothering him."

Nocturne let Link go with a sigh, only for the boy to turn onto his back and groan up at his own wrists. "Why am I glowing? Why are both of you glowing?"

Oceanis paused and checked his own marks. He'd noticed Nocturne still hadn't fully gotten his power under wraps once more, but he was quite surprised to realize he had been affected so strongly too. He could hardly tell Link the truth: strong emotion certainly did do this, but he didn't think explaining about orgasms would help the situation one bit. He sorted through what he could say and decided a part of the truth might be enough.

"You know I was helping your father with his memories since we came back in touch," Oceanis began, and Link nodded from his place in the bed, blue eyes only barely open. "Some things are—adjacent to the affairs of intercourse, related problems sometimes about touch. One of those is what upset your father so much, and once he'd calmed down he asked my help…"

He let his voice trail off, as he watched Link's eyes slide closed. Nocturne had already drifted back to sleep, the light from the window diffuse as a fog rose around the house still holding the comforting smell of the sea. He sighed, but Enma wasn't at the house tonight and Saria was dead asleep in her rooms.

There was no one else to account for. Father and son were tucked around each other in bed, and he was not the least bit sleepy himself while still feeling the echoes of that intense pull all the way into his bones.

Once he was certain the two were asleep, he sat back against the headboard and pulled out his notes. As he did so—as his thoughts turned inwards, towards that so-recent experience, he felt Thalassa uncurl like a nosy, playful eel in his mind and begin to wind her way around the thoughts in turn.

Brother, you had Night in your bed and didn't wake me?

We were busy. He groaned, that same affection he felt towards Nocturne alive in turn towards her. I needed to focus to do what he asked.

You should see how well that lasted sometime, she suggested, with a very crude and admiring thought towards their brother's cock relative to her own preferred anatomy. I can help if so. I might want to be in charge for that one.

SISTER! Oceanis pressed his lips tight, muffling any laughter that might wake his company even as he deftly took those notes down all their own. He doubted Nocturne would be as pleased by the night by morning: he was still drunk on the high emotions, glowing even in his sleep… but he didn't think the drop would be as bad as he might fear. Perhaps if it wasn't he might concede to try again…

He would not insist. Thalassa knew that; it was teasing, a little fondness and wistfulness for new and interesting experiences. It made sense such a novelty had woken her and he enjoyed it while it lasted, playing the memory back and forth between them like a shell between two dolphins. He stirred occasionally to take notes as particularly interesting observations came to light, but much of the night was meditation.

It was just after dawn before anyone else woke. Link grumbled his way awake from where he lay, head pillowed on his father's arm and Oceanis blinked conscious, catching the boy's eyes with a smile.

"Ah. Good morning."

There were options for questions, he supposed. None of them came out of his mouth. Link looked from him to Nocturne and back away, then slowly, carefully extricated himself from the bed.

"Morning," Link muttered. "I, uhm, I should go. You said there's a meeting today?"

"Not until later, but yes," Oceanis agreed. "Do you want the bath?"

"Yeah, lemme go start it—"

He let him go, waiting only until he was out the door to give in to the quiet urge to laugh. Nocturne groaned in place, disturbed by the movement and speech, and turned onto his back to look up at Oceanis himself.

There was a little grief to lose that soft, pleasant look on his face. Oceanis had known it would never last; there was a great deal of work that went into getting someone so soft in your arms. But still, he missed it and took the risk of gently running his thumb over Nocturne's face, smoothing the line of his forehead between the blue lines of Nayru's mark.

Nocturne let him do it, bright eyes closing at the touch, and he sighed.

"Thank you," he said, his voice carefully light.

"Of course. You needed help, and I gave it. Do you feel better?"

"Yes." The word waved a little, uncertain. "The experience was… interesting."

"I'm happy to talk about it at any point you want to. It was an honour to be trusted so much."

That got a ghost of the smile from the night before. Nocturne shook it off a moment later, sat up and sighed as he realized what he was wearing, stripping with only a brief look back Oceanis' way before pulling on his own clothes to start the day.

He was pretty sure that would be the end of this, of course. Nocturne had never shown much interest in sex before and that was unlikely to change now, no matter how pleasant the night had been.

But it didn't stop him from enjoying the view and Thalassa sighed happily in the back of his mind.