Title: 10 things (I hate about you)
Characters: Sheik, Link, Zelda, Midna.
Word Count: 931
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Drabble I wrote and liked enough to post here. I've tried several of these; what about you? Set in an AU where Sheik is in Twilight Princess (I'm delusional, I know). Previously posted on the SheikLink community on LiveJournal from my account.

10 things (I hate about you)

After one particularly frustrating month of following Link around, Sheik began to mentally compose a list of what exactly the hero tended to do that aggravated him so much.

10. The traveling. Now, Sheik wasn't exactly one for settling down either. His own home village was abandoned, his grandmother being the sole inhabitant. And yes, maybe getting from Point A to Point B was crucial to Link's quest. But it was getting to a point of ridiculousness.

After all, was it really necessary for Link to travel to Faron Woods to get a red potion, and then move all the way back to Death Mountain, only to double back when he realized he forgot to buy the bottle for Coro?

9. The searching. Hylian civilization was at its height, and there were more than enough rupees to go around. Not to mention that the dungeons which the hero had to traverse contained more than enough treasure. So it was beyond Sheik's grasp why Link would spent four days searching for a female gold beetle in Hyrule Field, reward money or not.

8. The stubbornness. Link had spent a week trying to get the chest on the second level of the Flight-By-Fowl game, after claiming the treasures in the rest of the chests. At first it had been entertaining, if not a bit nerve-wracking, to see Link plunge to the platform time after time.

By the second day, Sheik was considering getting onto the platform, opening the damn chest, and giving it to Link. He hadn't; of course, because something told him Link would just go back and try again until he himself accomplished it.

7. The recklessness. Sheik maintained that his heart stopped the moment Link leapt off the balcony above the Zora's waterfall, only to land on the ledge instead of in the water. The worst part was when Link stood, dusted himself off, and tried again.

6. Link's perchance to rush into battle when he was on the verge of collapsing. Sheik was pretty sure that it should have gone under recklessness, but it was brainless (or nerve-wracking or constant) enough to warrant its own place on the list.

5. Link's habit of testing archers' range, and once realizing he could collect the arrows fired at him, making a point of doing so whenever he could. The fact that they were on fire and grabbing them from the ground only worked half of the time seemingly didn't matter to the hero.

4. Link's love for explosives. After the hero obtained the underwater bombs, he traveled through Hyrule and blew up every single large underwater rock he could get at. Not to mention if a bomb rolled away from a rock, he compensated by going up to the rock and holding the bomb while it exploded.

3a. Link's love for other people, which lead him to the ends of the earth to help them, all out of his own will. Some it may have helped his quest, but somehow Sheik didn't think that catering to the whims of a spoiled girl wasn't going to help save the world.

3b[i]. Link's love of animals that made him spend hours playing fetch with that one puppy in the Marketplaces.

3b[ii]. Link's love of animals that lead him to spend four hours chasing squirrels in wolf from when he was back visiting Ordon.

2. The warping. The first time that Link turned into a wolf and was materialized away from his current position after the light was restored almost made Sheik swallow his own tongue. As is, his heart did a particularly painful thud in his chest and Sheik was pretty sure that a few of his hairs greyed.

Keeping track of Link was hard enough, what with his love for riding Epona to a point that would surely have gotten him scolded by Ilia, and Sheik having to follow on foot. The hero having the ability to disappear and reappear at a point unknown to Sheik only made things far worse.

When Sheik had mentioned it to Zelda after losing track of Link, her completely unhelpful suggestion was to simply alert Link of his presence and tag along.

For some reason, Sheik had a feeling that telling him 'Hi, I'm a servant of Princess Zelda who's kept an eye on you for your entire life and has followed you around since you set foot outside the village. I have you completely memorized, except for when your demonic imp of a companion vaporizes you so you disappear without a trace. I'm getting really tired of searching all over Hyrule for you, so can I just tag along with you for the rest of the quest?' wasn't going to go over too well.

Then again with Link, you never really knew for sure.

1. The very worst thing about Link was soon enough, the stupid things he did no longer made Sheik roll his eyes. Instead they made him smile, which was discontenting, and thus at the top of his list.

When he told all these to the princess, she had listened, chuckled, and told Sheik that she was glad he was having so much fun. Sheik privately thought that Zelda must have gone insane to even consider such a notion.