#today i bringeth thee he/him trans gal melli and ingo looking Extremely Respectfully

[randomwriteronline]

Not in a million years would Melli have meant to slip it out like that, so naturally, so nonchalantly. He would rather have kept it to himself for the rest of eternity, or if he'd ever changed his mind he would have liked it to have the appropriate amount of flare and stone cold stalwartness as it deserved - though anything that wouldn't have been a broken whisper would have done.

But instead, because Ingo had held out a hand to catch his own as he helped him down a steeper step down the mountainside, and the gesture had been kind despite the fact they were arguing, he simply conceded with a frown: "At least you know how to treat a lady."

Then he bit his tongue; but the damage was already done.

Ingo looked at him, stone faced as always if with a glint of surprise in his eyes.

"Ah," he noted simply, with a slight apprehension: "Pardon me, I am worried my memory might have once again failed me. Have you shared this information with me beforehand?"

Melli shook his head.

"I see! That's a relief. I feared you might have mentioned that already and unbeknownst to myself I had kept on employing wrong terms when speaking of you."

The words made the Diamond's danger sense perk up, and he hastily asked: "What wrong terms?"

"Mister, sir, man, he, him, and the such," Ingo helpfully replied.

Oh.

General terms.

Still, Melli gave him a deep, haughty frown: "I never said I wasn't ‘him’," he hissed, "For your information."

"I understand! I do agree I should have asked instead of assumed. Thank you for correcting me," the other responded without even a flinch, or a gawk, or a doubtful grimace, or a shake his head in disbelief, or a few hasty blinks as he had to do a double take just to make sure he had heard him correctly.

His tranquility somehow only worsened the antsy mood Electrode's warden found himself trapped in. He lifted his chin high with as scornful a look as he could muster: "I wasn't planning on telling you either way," he scoffed: "But since you tricked me into doing so I better hope you won't have the bright idea of sharing that with any of your folk, or I'll have my Lord zap the breath out of your lungs!"

"I had no intention of pushing you to reveal such a vulnerable part of yourself," Ingo replied apologetically, "But do not fret: I shall endeavor to protect your privacy and keep it to myself."

Melli's solemn nod branded his response with a seal of approval.

Of course, Sneasler’s warden had to ruin that by adding: “Much like I would like you to endeavor not to undo my hard work and keep yourself from snuffing out my torches.”

The tentative calm was shattered in an instant as the woman angrily replied: “Well! Maybe I wouldn’t bother you so much if you just stopped doing that! The Pokémon don’t like the light, I’ve told you!”

“Yes, and you are perfectly right in saying so, Miss Melli!” (and in a moment the animosity was once again blown up with a loud poof!, leaving the lilac haired head to be gently swarmed with a pleasant shapeless feeling very similar to euphoric joy) “But while the species residing in such an environment have long developed methods to orient themselves in the dark, humans can only count on their sight to do so, which is greatly impeded by the lack of any light source. I understand the sudden change might be jarring for the Pokémon themselves, but in the long run it might be safer for them as well as ourselves if passing commuters do not stumble directly into their jaws because they could not see them.”

The side effect of having a mind unclouded by petty hatred was that this time Melli actually did listen to whatever was being said to him instead of automatically deciding against it.

That strange positive feeling still had him ensnared in its gentle grip, causing him to twirl the tips of his silky hair as a kinder mood had him twist his mouth and admit: “That’s… A fair point. But then how would you suppose to fix that, hm?”

“Through a collaboration, perhaps.” Ingo offered: “I unfortunately lack the additional years of experience on the territory that you have, since you’ve been a warden longer than I have. If you would agree to work with me, I’m certain we would have little trouble devising effective routes through the various caves in the Highlands that would both guide commuters safely out of them and make sure the wellbeing and comfort of resident Pokémon is maintained.”

“An acceptable proposal,” Melli nodded, his good mood slowly passing but still unclouding his pompous mind enough to actually hear the man out.

“I’m glad you think so! Perhaps we could start right away, tomorrow morning.”

“Not a chance,” the woman quickly stopped him: “I need to leave the Highlands for a couple of days. You people Pearls love your space, I get it, but I cannot be in two places at once, now can I? And don’t you even try putting up torches while I’m gone! I’ll take it all back!”

Ingo hummed thoughtfully: “By when would you plan to be back, Miss?”

A smile lit the other warden’s face right up: “In two days,” he replied much more amiably, giddy once again, “I’ll be here by midday.”

“Then I suppose your request to keep the caves unlit is reasonable, though it pains me to leave them lacking proper lighting,” the man nodded. “If your return had been delayed for even just a day longer, I fear I would have had to disobey your orders to ensure the safety of potential passengers. I shall simply accompany them through instead.”

“Hm! I guess it would have been fair,” Melli conceded.

It took maybe less than a moment to properly realize he had just agreed with the other, but even despite the minuscule amount of time that had passed the damage had been done; so he stiffened slightly again, shook his head, held his chin high so he wouldn’t have to look at Ingo’s shit-eating grin (or at least at what he was certain was a shit-eating grin, which it wasn’t, because Ingo was not a man who made such faces due to his struggling expressivity, plus he was honestly just glad they had gotten an agreement) and huffed.

“I better go!” he announced. “Lord Electrode needs me before I leave. Don’t slow me down.”

“I would hate to do so,” Sneasler’s warden reassured him, and kindly tipped his hat: “Have a safe trip, Miss Melli.”

He could not see Melli’s face as he left, since he turned away very quickly and marched off as fast as he could; but if he had, he would have seen the biggest smile on the woman’s face, and he probably would have even heard the joyful thundering beat of his heart as it hammered away in his chest with pure mirth.

-

“I’m a miss,” Melli gloated.

Adaman raised an eyebrow at him: “Hm?”

“I’m a miss, now,” his sister repeated. The hand on his chest was full of pride. “Ingo’s called me ‘Miss Melli’.”

“Ingo knows?”

“I didn’t mean to tell him, but I did, and it’s fine either way because he’s been very nice about it. He calls me ‘Miss Melli’, now.”

The leader hummed, smiling slightly: “That’s Galarian, isn’t it?”

Melli nodded.

“And how do you know it’s not an insult?”

At that the warden turned sharply to shoot a venomous glare straight at him: “It’s not!”

“Oh? You know Galarian?”

“I know it’s not an insult! Ingo wouldn’t do that! He’s too nice!”

“And how are you sure? Have you been…” and at that Adaman grinned mischievously, wiggling his eyebrows: “Fraternizing with him?”

Seeing his sister’s face turn beet red was absolutely priceless. He laughed at his fuming anger, shielding his face with an arm when he seemed about to be getting a whole faceful of kindling wood thrown at himself.

“I am not fraternizing!” Melli hissed: “He’s just around all the time!”

“Stop playing!” Mai yelled at them before going back to preparing the pyre for the evening.

Her younger sister whined back at her: “He’s being mean to me!”

It was, however, Iscan who came to his aid - as he always did, of course.

Their cousin’s unmistakable wavy hairline peeked out from beneath a discrete amount of fish he was gutting exceptionally quickly: “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Adaman cackled, “Melli’s just been fraternizing with the weird old man Ingo.”

“I’m not!” Melli shrieked: “He’s just being nice! Unlike you!”

“Calm down now,” Iscan soothed him, “What happened exactly?”

The Highland warden sighed: “My tongue slipped because of his good manners.”

“His good manners?” his brother echoed.

Iscan masterfully redirected the attention back on himself before another squabble could begin: “Oh? You told him?”

“Yes! And now he calls me ‘Miss Melli’,” and he smiled brilliantly for a moment, face lighting up with genuine euphoria, before side-eyeing his grinning brother with piqued disdain as he clarified: “Because he’s being nice, and not because I’m fraternizing with him.”

His cousin smiled at that: “Ah, that’s good to know. He did strike me as a kind fellow.”

“I still think it’s an insult,” Adaman commented.

He ducked to evade a branch smacking his nose right off.

Fed up with his cackling, Melli stormed off stomping his feet to help Mai and Arezu instead, mumbling angrily about how he should have gone with them to begin with, since ladies don’t usually make fools out of fellow ladies - which was wholly untrue, especially in the case of Arezu who had that annoying habit of gossiping about everything and everyone at their expense, but it is worth pointing out that neither of the other female wardens made fun of him as much and as obnoxiously as their leader currently was.

Even Iscan gave him a gently disapproving look as he went right back to deboning Barboach.

His leader raised his shoulders as he still chuckled: “What!” he laughed, “You never know! Maybe he’s calling him a tramp behind his back.”

“Come on now, let him have this,” the warden replied: “You’ve met the man before, right?”

“Yes, yes, I know that warden’s not one to do something as mean as that. Melli’s just too much fun to watch him when he’s angry like that.”

“I bet he thinks the same of you.”

At that, Adaman groaned: “Oh, I know he does. He’s been doing that for years now. I bet he thinks it’s hilarious.”

“And do you want to stoop to that level and bicker like kids until the end of time?”

A huff: “No…”

“Then let that poor girl keep his bubble of happiness just this once,” Iscan concluded, satisfied, and threw away the bones in a neat pile by himself.

The younger man also momentarily dropped the conversation, going back to work to bring the kindling over to the growing bonfire that would have been lit up that night in celebration of the first half of the year passing. He returned after a short while, however, hands empty and steps as quiet as a Leafeon’s, to sit by his cousin again with a conspiratorial air and a smirk that promised nothing good.

He put his hand to the man’s ear and whispered: “I still think they have something going on.”

Iscan sighed and laughed a little bit: “How about you leave the gossiping to Arezu and help me get dinner ready instead?”

Adaman groaned again.

Much to his cousin’s satisfaction, he picked up a Barboach, a knife, and got to work.

-

Working with Ingo, as it turned out, was actually really easy.

He was very receptive to instructions as well as intuitive when it came to finding fallacies and offering solutions, and while he had his own discrete amount of expertise on caves he was also quite happy to listen to Melli’s inputs and follow them if he judged them better than his own ideas.

It was almost as though the Diamond warden could have benefitted from this pleasant cooperation from the start if he had just pulled his pretty head out of his own ass!

He squashed that thought under his boot, of course.

Especially because, after the first few caves, the woman had noticed something that had started worsening his mood.

Ingo was as polite as ever, helping him down steeper ledges, calling him ‘Miss’, thanking him and all; but he kept avoiding ever meeting Melli’s eyes like the plague, and never dared to look at him for too long. As soon as he wasn’t concentrating on the task at hand he would fix his gaze somewhere else entirely, more often than not turning his whole head away even while talking directly to him, sometimes with a low, almost hesitant voice.

The woman’s mind churned around these details, turning them around angrily in his skull as his thoughts worsened, and his mood together with them. A shadow was cast over his fair face as he brooded in silence, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

It did not help that he felt worse than if it had been anybody else.

Oh, it hurt when somebody treated him like this once they found out, of course it did, and in a way he had always expected one of those blasted Pearls to see him as lesser for it, and had prepared himself so that he could drown their disgust in his roaring assertion of his own exceptionality and myriad of incredible qualities; but when it came to his fellow hermit he could not help but feel like no amount of screaming in a mirror that he was worth just as much as all his sisters and brothers and cousins and clansmen would have soothed the disheartening feeling agitating his chest.

As mentioned, the other warden was very receptive when he wanted to be; so as they both placed the last torch in the path they had both devised, his white eyes turned upwards, towards the scowl darkening in vitriol of his companion, and carefully asked with earnest concern in his voice: “Forgive my indelicacy for asking you so bluntly, Miss, but - may I help with whatever is vexing you?”

His kindness was unfortunately undone as he once again averted Melli’s gaze for a second, and the tall woman snapped at him venomously: “If you were so disgusted by my existence that you couldn’t stomach looking at me, you could have said that earlier!”

Ingo seemed taken aback for a second.

Then he shouted: “AH!” and slapped his face.

He shook his head several times, humming and groaning, playing with his hat as though he was about to smack it on his leg in frustration - a display that confused Melli greatly.

“Forgive me, Miss Melli,” he finally explained guiltily: “I’m afraid my struggle with being visibly expressive has thwarted my relations with others once again. It was not my intention to appear as though I find the sight of you unpleasant – it’s, ah… Forgive me, it is a little embarrassing to bare my thoughts like this. I find it hard to look at you for, well, for the opposite reason, truly.”

“Which would be?”

“I find you to be very beautiful.”

The Diamond stared him down, remaining briefly silent: “I am,” he replied. “You didn’t have any trouble looking at me before.”

“I am very aware of that,” Ingo reassured him, “I did not mean to imply that you were not lovely to behold, that much is very obvious to anybody who is capable of seeing without problems. The matter is simply that, not being attracted to men and mistakenly believing you to be one, I had not been fully exposed to any side effects your looks could have had on me until very recently.”

The harshness in Melli’s expression mellowed slowly, turning his furious frown into a thoughtful neutral look; the tension left his shoulders, his thin hands began playing with the ends of his hair as he reflected on those words. Anger had left him.

In its stead, a slow realization caused a smile to creep onto his face.

He eyed Ingo without a word, fluttering his lashes gently a few times to watch him struggle not to follow his slender finger as he dragged it along his own jaw.

“I see,” he chirped, sweeter than honey: “So it’s because you like me.”

The man looked at him almost in a daze as he slowly processed the words.

His entire face turned completely red in a matter of seconds.

He jerked his head away completely to both pitifully attempt to mask his embarrassment at having his feelings so easily unveiled and avoid deafening the object of his infatuation as he shouted hurriedly: “OH GOODNESS ME WHAT IS THAT MEOWLING SOUND OVER THERE, I DO BELIEVE SNEASLER IS REQUESTING MY PRESENCE POST HASTE I’M AFRAID I MUST ANSWER HER CALL IMMEDIATELY, THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP AND HAVE A GOOD DAY MISS MELLI!”

Then he speeded away, as fast and stiff as a boat with powerful winds in its sail, followed by the beautiful sound of Melli’s unrestrained laughter.

-

Skuntank hadn’t seen his companion so exuberantly happy in quite a while now.

The woman was still cackling at his admirer’s reaction, recounting over and over his accidental confession and subsequent swift departure as he combed his hair through his fingers – a gesture that betrayed how overwhelmingly pleased he was to have learned what a special opinion of him his fellow warden had.

Ingo might have had him wrapped around his little finger with that ‘Miss’, but Melli had him completely bewitched!

Ah, he could see himself already, Electrode’s warden mused, getting out of an argument by flustering him, convincing him to run some errands for him just by batting his lashes, watching him color red and hide behind his hat at a flirt, teasing him endlessly, making him shake just by offering the slightest glimpse of bare skin!

His trusted partner listened without a care, happy to listen to joyful ramblings instead of whining yet again - though he did quickly notice how the fantasies were slowly veering away from simply taking advantage of the man or delighting themselves with making fun of him… Now where had ideas of sharing food, or baths, or kisses come from? What exactly would his mistress have gained from it in terms of amusement or favors? He wasn’t mentioning any as he spoke of those…

But all Skuntank had to do was take a better look at the woman, and he understood instantly.

Melli stopped laughing just enough to hear the comforting yet thunderous sound of his partner purring knowingly, almost mockingly, with a wide smirk on his already smug muzzle as he laid his chin on one of his large hind legs.

The warden tilted his head: “What’s so funny?” he asked, still cackling.

The Pokémon mewled with a low rumble as if to feign innocence and kneaded a single paw, his right one, in the carpet.

His companion imitated the motion by reflex, tightening his own fingers absentmindedly. Oh? And what was this, now? He’d been playing with something, apparently. He traced the shape and took in the texture while mindlessly running his digits over the mystery object, only vaguely recognizing that he was grazing his own neck as well.

In the end he figured out what Skuntank was trying to bring his attention to: he was just turning the pendant of his necklace around his palm! Such a small thing… Though it had been a while since he’d last done so, hadn’t it?

Yes, he could remember it – the last time he’d played with it like this was when he’d fallen for that annoying boy a few years ago, like a foolish girl, returning all bashful and shy…

He did not make the connection immediately, still so caught up in his own thoughts that he could barely understand the subtext his partner was trying to bring his mind to. But the more he touched the smooth stone, the more he realized the tenderness of the motion was intrinsically linked to his plans regarding Ingo; not only that, but when he tried stopping either the thinking or the caressing he found with growing horrified embarrassment that he could not manage, for in order to cease doing one he would have needed to stop doing the other as well, and the more he thought of stopping the more his mind went right back to the Pearl clansman, to his honesty when he’d confessed himself, his red face, his sweet words, his hands, his eyes, his—

“Oh no,” Melli wheezed at last.

Skuntank gave an intermittent grumble similar to a laugh as his mistress hid his fair face against his knees with a high pitched groan whilst kicking his feet, half mortified, half excited.

Ah, fuck.

It was mutual.