Written for the unusual slash pairing challenge on the Livejournal community ffixslash.
Night had long since fallen, but he knew the way like his own paws. Rough grass crunched under his feet, the mountains looming up dark and light sifting out from a crack in the rocks, he could smell the paper and machinery and bustling furry bodies on the breeze. And his back ached harder with the relief of finally getting there, stepping up onto the smooth-worn wood floor and the warmth of the place sinking into his fur. Mognet Central, in all its subtle glory -- everything they worked for. Stiltzkin was home. Sometimes he wondered if he traveled just for the simple joy of coming home afterward.
Mognet clattered constantly, alive at any time of day like a living, breathing creature of his own, letters for its blood. But the creature was asleep now and its clatter was slower, the night shift shuffling about on the floor above, the whirr of sorting machines echoing in the nighttime quiet. Pleasantly peaceful, and it was nice that for once, no one noticed him. Hitching up his pack, Stiltzkin passed through the swinging wooden doors with a squeak of hinges, he walked through the stillness of dark rooms and bulky, shapeless heaps of mailbags. He walked down the narrow hallway, close and winding enough to feel deeply, instinctively comforting to any moogle, the darkness like a warm coat, the smell of business and mail fading to soft cloth and still air. And he arrived at the fifth door on the right, a destination he knew well even without sight, the homiest corner of home.
The door creaked and muttered when he opened it, the same way it always did, as familiar as the way the smooth, round doorknob fit into his paw. It clicked shut with less complaint and the bedroom was silent again, still. Stiltzkin knew where the bed-nest began, clear as if he could see in the pitch dark -- soft folds of cotton and sackcloth and wool, Artemicion buried somewhere under the comfort of it all. The bedroom smelled different, in a very slight way that he couldn't place. With a shrug of his sore-stiff shoulders, the weight of Stiltzkin's pack settled on the floor, bottles gently clinking.
The bed rustled, the questioning sound of someone's slow awareness.
"Stiltzkin...?" came a sleepy voice. Muffled, of course, because Artemicion liked to burrow under the bedcloth until only his bonbon showed. It was a wonder he could breathe like that.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," Stiltzkin murmured. Maybe it had taken Artemicion hours of overtime to get Mognet running again, to grease the huge gears until they rumbled instead of shrieked, and watch the towering piles of backlogged letters shuffle and sort until fatigue made his vision swim. He just wished he...didn't see it as justice. He hated feeling so cold.
"It's all right," Artemicion said quietly, "I'm just glad you're back."
That only made Stiltzkin hate the cold feeling more, as he pulled off his cap and smoothed it over the pack's lumpy surface. It was such relief to take off the traveling gear, the armour, stop being Stiltzkin The Traveler -- he was Stiltzkin now, just plain Stiltzkin. Slipping into the bed-nest's mass of cloth textures felt so good it nearly hurt, the wonderful simpleness of laying down and taking the weight off his feet, the bedcloth forming around him. And then Artemicion wriggled close, contact and body heat blanketing all the other warm feelings. This was home.
"I'm sorry..." Barely audible, whispered into his chest fur.
That was why the room smelled different -- the smell of Superslick still lingered in Artemicion's fur, a piercingly clean scent like new steel and beeswax. It was strange anywhere but Mognet's machines, anywhere but woven into the flow of the work. Just...why had he done it? Why?
"I know," Stiltzkin said, kinder than he meant to. He ran a paw over soft shoulder and back and velvet wing edge, over silky fur and he knew exactly where the violet stripes would be under his fingers.
"Just wasn't thinking, I guess...," Artemicion murmured, drowsy and slow, "Just wanted...something for me."
Something just for him, a guilty pleasure. That wasn't really so bad, was it? Stiltzkin stared up into the darkness, pulled a scrap of burlap over them both and thought of the siren song of travel. That could nearly be called guilty pleasure, wandering off for weeks regardless of what he left behind, of whether anyone missed him. Home was always there when he came back, his reasoning was, he could leave for a little while if he wanted to. Just for a while. Again and again. If being happy meant being guilty, then... No, it didn't. The matter was delicate and complicated and Stiltzkin wasn't going to figure it out while he was wrapped in comfort far better than his thin traveling blankets, his loved one warm and close, sleep dragging at his thoughts. He had been all over the world, and there was still so much he didn't know, and maybe never would know. He sighed, and the sound was big and round in the quiet.
"It's fine," he said. He couldn't tell if Artemicion was awake or not, but it didn't really matter. "I guess I understand."