So on one hand, Adaman needed to get back in the habit of knocking.
On the other, he could have walked into something much worse than Melli still sleeping with a naked arm that certainly wasn't his reaching out to lay on his side.
He stood for a moment or two in stunned bafflement, trying to decode to whom that alien limb could have belonged while his brother kept sleeping with not a care nor a worry to be found under Almighty Sinnoh's ever-changing skies.
The chilly mountain air must have crept in through the open door, because suddenly there was a disgruntled groan (definitely not in Melli's voice) and a body shifted to sit up, thunking his head against the top bunk with a soft 'ow' before turning to face the Diamond leader.
White eyelids waited a moment before rising to reveal very tired white eyes which squinted at the intruding young man.
"Good morning," said warden Ingo uncharacteristically flatly.
Unless he had grown a third arm and slipped it out of the tunic he was still very clearly wearing, the rogue limb now wrapping around his middle was not his either.
"Hello," Adaman only managed to reply.
"We are sorry to inform passengers that the Multi Line is momentarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance," Ingo continued, the near incomprehensible words coming out of his mouth clearly part of a script rehearsed and repeated many times before: "Please return at a later time."
Well.
The younger man guessed it did make sense that he was asking him to get the hell out.
And extremely politely, too.
"Alright," he croaked.
"Thank you for your patience," the warden nodded while a sound that was very close to warden Gaeric's voice mumbled something and the mystery arm around his waist was joined by Melli's to weakly try and coax him into laying down again. "Please have a good day and a safe ride."
And just like that he thunked his head back down on the pillow, where the other two bodies wasted no time coiling around him.
So Adaman closed the door behind himself and decided he was going to take a walk down the mountain for a while.
When he returned, roughly an hour later, he remembered to knock.
"Who's that?" Melli asked from inside.
"Just me," he replied.
There was some rustling, something similar to a thump; then the door was opened to let him in, revealing that his brother was alone in his hut.
This made the atmosphere exponentially much less awkward.
Melli of course remedied that by starting off with: "I know that you know."
The discreet sigh of relief about to surface from Adaman's throat froze so quickly he nearly choked on it, causing him to struggle a moment or two before turning around to face his warden with a nervous smile he couldn't help himself from plastering on his own face.
"... That I know what?" he tried.
Melli didn't have any of that: "I've been told you've seen something I would have rather you didn't," he replied vaguely enough so that he wouldn't betray himself in the case he actually had not seen it, arms crossed on his chest in a way that was less angry and more desperate not to blow up.
His leader, who was not built to endure silent staring contests on account of his lack of patience, caved in immediately to reassure him: "Well I mean, I saw the after--"
"There was no after."
"... So that was all?"
"That was all."
The certainty that he had intruded on totally wholesome actual sleeping in the same bed was actually pretty fucking relieving.
That didn't stop the silence from creeping back in and making him feel like his shoulders were being crushed by the weight of an Alpha Graveler, which he absolutely needed to remedy.
"So!" he started as he put his hands on hips, as if to start a conversation, and immediately regretted it since his train of thought stopped the second after what couldn't even be considered a sentence: "Wardens Ingo and Gaeric."
"Gaeric was here for unrelated reasons," Melli corrected very quickly. After a minuscule pause he saw it fit to add: "Unrelated to me."
The specification and implications carried with it might have killed Adaman on the spot if he had been weak enough. This horrible excuse for a dialogue with too long pauses between bombs of moderately cursed information felt like it was chipping away at his sanity.
Time be damned.
Warden Ingo got around, it seems.
"Did you come here to tell me something or did you just want to pry on my life?" Melli pressed, rather piqued.
His leader blinked and raised one of his index fingers in the air, blanking out for a couple seconds with a forlorn vacant stare. He shifted it a little lower, snapped his middle and thumb, and nodded as if he had managed to once again catch the thought which had slipped from his memory.
"There's been a birth," he announced. "Come down to the settlement."
"Now?"
"Or later. Today. Possibly."
"Will do."
Adaman gave him a wordless thumbs up.
"... So is that all?"
"Yes! I will. Go. Remember. Come down to the settlement."
"Will do."
"Ok. Good. Nice. Alright."
And while he kept stammering on a few more monosyllables the leader bid his goodbyes and left.
Melli inhaled deeply; he put his reddened face in his hands and exhaled with a groan.
"Glory be to Almighty Sinnoh for not sending Irida our way," Gaeric finally announced gratefully as he crawled out from under the bed where he had hastily hidden once the Diamond leader had first knocked, "None of us would have survived."
"Are you saying Adaman is weaker than her?" Electrode's warden hissed.
"I am saying he took it graciously," the wider man replied: "I doubt my leader would have been only too stunned for words if she saw her master, the man she welcomed in her clan and you snuggling together in your hut."
"And just what would that 'you' mean?"
That you're the last member of the Diamond Clan she would give her blessing to, Gaeric did not reply because while they both were getting along surprisingly well for the sake of their mutual beloved they were not quite comfortable enough being that blunt to each other's face without spending a whole day ruminating killer glares after: "That you're a Diamond," he said instead.
Melli pouted and narrowed his eyes in a look that said 'it fucking better mean only that'.
In the small bout of tension in which thet forced themselves to calm down and de-escalate the hostility, they both noticed a distinct lack of a third body either between them or anywhere visible.
Gaeric crouched back to the floor to look under the bed as the other warden leaned closer: "You can come out now, he's gone."
"After much thought and consideration," replied Ingo's voice, clearly muffled by the floor, "I have elected to remain here and embrace decay, submitting myself to the dust and rot."
"You have not offended Adaman," Melli assured him as he approached, sitting on his heels beside the other Pearl Clansman.
"My behavior was absolutely unforgivable," their lover insisted. "Telling a clan leader to get out like a brute. I'm never going to be able to merely even look at him without being consumed by the shame ever again. I'm hereby resigning from my undeserved position as station master and forever leaving society, cursed to wander the wilds as a vagabond for my acts."
"That so? And you'd leave us both here like widows, heartbroken and forever lamenting their poor darling husband's untimely disappearance?" Melli mocked his dramatic speech, making even Gaeric laugh as he laid on his stomach to fetch him beneath the bed: "That seems hardly noble."
"Oh, he's right, beloved," echoed Avalugg's warden as he dragged Ingo out of his hiding spot. The foreigner felt a rough nose and patches of beard coax his neck to recline, and a smirk press against his throat: "At least let us hide you away in our homes while you're on the run from your mistakes!"
Ingo gave a low rumbling whine at their teasing and joking, shielding his reddening face behind his arms as both devilish men sandwiched him between them to keep him from ducking back in the brooding darkness they had forced him to emerge from and began mercilessly kissing him all the way from his bony clavicles up to his cheeks, making him feel as warm as a raging fire in Eterna Forest.
He wriggled against their chests to somehow make his escape: "You must start journeying to the Mirelands," he managed to stagger out, "Or you'll get there too late."
"I'll go in just a moment!" Melli complained; his foot rested on his rival's stomach in an attempt to push him away: "But first I'll have you for myself a while since Gaeric will get to keep you all day!"
"I believe we'd agreed to share," Gaeric grumbled, scooting closer: "Especially since I'll be back in the Icelands soon enough..."
"Oh, now it's about sharing? Not when I have to sit and bear it when he visits you in your hellish tundra of a home?"
"That's rich - I recall you two have the entire mountain to yourselves every day!"
"Please release me," Ingo demanded.
He then immediately yelped as both his lovers magically got over their differences in an instant to better squeeze him between them, the feeling flustering him endlessly.
"This is the opposite of - at least let us get off the floor--!"
"We will, we will!"
"All in due time."
And they were back to drowning him in kisses, curling his hair between their fingers, nuzzling into his neck, snickering as they felt him burn up in their hold.
"Tremendous, you are tremendous," they heard him babble with a smile in his voice between the minuscule pauses of their loving torture as he melted like butter in their arms, "Awful little devils, the both of you - like bickering Gligars..."
"Uuuh, how mean, beloved," Gaeric laughed against his throat, "How very mean..."
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