Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four's been hammering away at the forge all day and  night. There's something comforting about the pounding of the hammer. It gives a rhythm to life.

But Dot's job isn't to enjoy the sound of the hammering, It's to get Four to take a break. Whether it's bribing him with cookies or helping him with a project, her job is to get Four to interact with the outside world. He's been quite the recluse since he came back from that adventure with heroes from different eras.

(And speaking of cookies, Dot's brought five different kinds. Sugar cookies for Red, oatmeal raisin for Vio, gingerbread for Blue, shortbread for Green, and chocolate chunk for good measure. All were freshly baked by Wheaton & Pita. Dot specifically ordered them without kinstones. That one time Blue's tooth came out after biting into a croissant was not something Dot needed to relive.)

Entering the forge, Dot can clearly see that Four definitely hasn't cleaned up lately, which is a tad concerning. He's normally a neat freak, at one point he had to fold up his hat before he could go to sleep (kudos to you if you get that reference) It's probably messy because he's too tired to care , Dot theorizes, which is a problem, because if he's too tired to care, then he needs to sleep. Like, right now, d*****!

So Dot says so.

"Hey! Mr. Shortie! YOU NEED TO FREAKING SLEEP! YOUR FORGE IS FREAKING NIGHTMARE!" Four definitely hears her; he perks up slightly but continues working.

"Oh, hey Dot. How's it goin- mffff." Oh goddesses. He fell asleep in the middle of his work. Dot tries not to laugh. The idiot.

Thankfully he didn't fall forward into his metalwork; Dot can see it glowing with heat from here. But he's sliding forward ever so slightly. Dot knows if she leaves it be, then Four's face will meld with the metal.

So she doesn't leave it be. She drops the cookies (rip) and sprints over to save her friend from a fiery fate. Thank Din that she isn't wearing a dress today. If not, both of their faces would be melted.

Wait, we should make masks of melted faces for Halloween this year! We can tell everybody that we fell in Four's forge! She's already imagining the reactions of the people in Hyrule town!

But back to the dilemma at hand. (Goddesses know that she could go off on tangents all day long.) Four is obviously exhausted. Since he's so small (probably because of minish magic, but tanGENT), she can carry him upstairs.

No, not in a creepy way. Do y'all readers want him to be sleeping in his forge? No!

So Dot carries him upstairs and tucks him in. And may or may not throw all of his Minish stuffed animals on him. He has those for a reason, you know! And it sure isn't just to sit there and collect dust!

Dot decides she's going to make them lunch. Of course she'll need permission for that.......

"Hey! Mr. Smithy!" Dot calls down the stairs at the top of her lungs before she remembers that Four is asleep right next to her. Oops . She bounds down the stairs, taking them two at a time. "Can I use the oven to make food of some sort?" She crosses her fingers, just in case he doesn't want to risk her possibly burning down his house. (That was only once, you know! She says it won’t happen again, but that’s what she said right before she was kidnapped. For the second time.)

"That's fine, so long as you don't make any of that dubious food that Wild fellow was trying to get his friends to eat. It looked disgusting ." Dot nods and races off to the kitchen. She had tried said dubious food. It was actually fairly decent, but she would rather not know what the ingredients are.

Now, what to make. If Dot ever had a problem, it was having too many ideas. She could make grilled cheese, she could make toast. Heck, she could make cupcakes if she wanted to. Wait........

Hadn't Dot brought cookies? Where are they? Retracing her steps, she found the cookies waiting in the forge. Opening the bag, she breathes a sigh of relief. At least they aren't too melted.

And Dot hears a voice. It sounds spooky. "Well duh I'm spooky it's literally in my name." What.

"Who the heck are you and why can I hear you?" Dot is just confused at this point.

"Glad you asked. My discord username is YeetAroundABush#9075, but on the LU discord server I am currently going by spooky month (JJ). And since the author said she needed ideas, here's the one I submitted: make shepherd's pie!"

Dot was skeptical. "But won't that make a mess?" She really doesn't want to make Four's grandpa annoyed with her again, her antics are already causing more gray hairs.

"That's the entire point!" chimes in yet another voice, which sounds oddly like Four but off. "You do realize this entire 'voice' randomness is a plot device because the author (me) had no idea what the heck she was doing starting this." WHAT THE FU- "No cursing, this is going to be posted as general."

"And because this ruins the flow of the story, we're going to be erasing this scene from your mind. And remember, though this is completely irrelevant to the plot, as the Duolingo bird says : 'Spanish or vanish'. Goodbye, Dot!"

The last few minutes are erased from Dot's mind. All that remains is the idea that she should make shepherd's pie.

And so Dot makes Shepherd's pie. Why she chose that, she can’t remember. But she makes it anyway. And, as predicted, along with the pie comes a mess. A very big one.

Oopsie daisies.

Chapter Text

When Four wakes up, he can smell burning pie. Great, Dot's probably at it again. Suddenly remembering why he was sleeping and why Dot is probably burning down the house, he gets up and slides down the banister. (Because it's cool. Prove to him otherwise.)

When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, which oh-so-conveniently lead right into the kitchen, he says to Dot "Good evening." Dot, who is covered in flour, which is not a good sign of what is awaiting him in the kitchen, looks at him, confused.

"Uuum, it's not evening?" Four keeps himself from rolling his eyes. Of course it isn't. It's how he was presented in one of many 'Linked Universe as tik toks or vines' videos. But he can't say that. Vines and tik toks don't exist in this universe, though Four's fairly certain that Dot got a visit from a reader or two while he was asleep. "Anyways, I have good news, and then I have bad news."

"What's the good news?”

"I didn't burn down your house."

"Way to shoot for the stars." His tone is sarcastic, but his eyes are glittering and he's probably grinning like a maniac. This was what he had been missing while he was holed up in the forge. "And the bad news?"

Dot shows him.... something that's charred. "The shepherd's pie might just be a lump of coal at this point." It might have resembled a pie at one point. 'Might' being the key word.

"Why Grandfather continues to let you use the oven, I will never truly know." It's practically a running joke at this point that Dot can't cook to save her life. Rather like Hyrule, actually.

"Probably because I actually used the oven instead of the forge last time. Remember when we made pizza on the forge? It was spectacular !" Failed attempt at shepherd's pie already forgotten, Dot asks Four, "Want a cheese sandwich?”

Nodding, Four begins to make tea. It's only when the water's almost boiled that Four realizes that he has to choose a type of tea. Of course, even as a regular person, choosing one type of tea is difficult. Citation: I can't choose. If you multiply each of those choices by Four, you begin to grasp his predicament. He shatters, opinions flying every which way.

We should drink Earl Gray. Goddesses know we need the caffeine. thinks Vio.

But I want chamomile! It's clearly the best, especially if we add honey. You have no taste in tea! Blue's not just angry with Vio's choice of tea. He's also annoyed that they split over such a stupid thing as tea.

Then we shouldn't have chamomile. If you insult my taste in tea, you are by extension insulting your own taste in tea, as we are the same person. If you had listened closely, you would have known the tea I picked was based more on the caffeine content than personal preference.

Stop trying to break my brain!

Our brain, Vio adds helpfully.

I would prefer Chai myself. Says Green.

H ot Chocolate would be delicious too!

Red, Hot Chocolate isn't tea. Now Blue's irritated with both Red and Vio.

Legend's suggestion of chilled Hibiscus sounded good too!

Now there is a fifth voice in Four's head. Red, I'd like you to know that JJ of the LU discord server says that hot chocolate can be a tea if you want it to, and I wholeheartedly agree with them! Adios, have fun deciding what kind of tea to have. Also just as a heads up, one does not simply walk into mor- I mean simply tell BabaBlueSheep that tea is not the superior beverage!

Four's head is filled with overlapping opinions. The noise is too loud to bear, so he shuts his eyes and covers his ears. Spoiler alert: it doesn't help at all .

When Four regains his senses, he's sitting down with five cups of tea in front of him, or rather, four cups of tea and one of hot chocolate.

"What the frick , Dot?”

Dot looks up from her own cup of tea. "What?" she says innocently enough, but her mischievous grin gives away that she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"How did you know what kinds of tea I wanted? We wanted very specific kinds, you know. Red even wanted hot chocolate, which Blue maintains is not tea despite what the author says. Vio agrees with the author. ."

Dot wiggles her fingers theatrically. "Magic! It is the spoopy season after all!"

After laughing with Four for four minutes over the sheer ridiculousness of their existence as basically-adults-but-still-technically-kids, Dot admits "In all honesty, I heard you say something about hot chocolate and guessed the other two, because what do you know, great minds think alike. And then I remembered that Mr. Salty pantsless-dude said something about Hibiscus tea being good, and here we are."

Four is dying of laughter. "'Mr. Salty pantsless-dude?' You mean Legend?"

"Pink hair, weird hat, salty as heck?"

"That's him!"

They continue chatting over their cheese sandwiches (which shockingly don't taste terrible) for a while before Four comes to a very important and critical conclusion.

"What the heck am I supposed to be doing with five cups of tea?"

Dot grins. "I suppose you'll have to drink them. Oh, the horror !" She pretends to faint, nearly knocking over her cup of tea in the process. "Oops."

When she gets back up she continues. "What do you think you're supposed to do with the tea, doofus? Water the plants with it? I doubt that'd be very effective. It would probably kill them instead!"

Four rolls his eyes "You know that I'm like two feet tall-"

"True that." Dot interrupts him, nodding. "Never have words that mean that much been spoken."

"As I was saying," Four fixes Dot with a glare, "I doubt I could consume that much tea."

And yet the author somehow manages to do it.

Dot shrugs. "I figured that you would drink it all, then just, like, have a really full bladder." Four's reaction is priceless.

He blushes both redder and brighter than one of the blood moons from Wild's Hyrule. It truly is a sight to see. "Dot!" he hisses, sounding a bit like a dying cat.

If you were to walk into the room with no context at all right at that moment, you would most likely think, "Aw, she made him blush. How cute."

Not so if you had context.

If you had context, your reaction would probably be more along the lines of "Ah yes, potty humor. One of the best ways to either get someone to break a spleen laughing or make their face feel as hot as Death Mountain (or Mount Crenel or Eldin Volcano depending on your era. You could even refer to it as 'Mount Doom' because that is a generic name that doesn't seem fitting of a story with in-world languages, but that's not the author's place to say.)

To cover up the awkwardness created by the fairly off-topic comment that had been meant to be the punchline from the beginning of this chapter, Four spooned a bunch of sugar into some of his Chai tea.

Dot is offended by the amount of sugar Four puts in.

"You know, if you're going to ruin the tea, at least ruin it correctly." She then proceeds to dump the rest of the container of sugar in.

Four's face is reminiscent of a surprised Pikachu face.