1950s, seaside town, Norway.

he lights up a cigarette and brings it to his chapped lips, and the airs stops smelling like the night and the sea and begins to smell just like the pub he's just left,

and he wonders why, why, why,

why must it come to this.

He's got this friend that says it's drinking yourself senseless that makes it all look fresher in the morning, but damn him he's tried, and all he's gotten is yelled at (again, when he tried to get away from that and he came back to that, again, always again, and why? why?), sea-sickness on land and a handful of tissue papers,

but then he does sometimes get a get-better-kiss,

but not tonight, not tonight.

tonight he's lighting a cigarette and singing an old sailor song in a dialect from up north, hoping it's already dawn again to come back home and make coffee, he's brought it good from Colombia this time and, this time, she won't be around to drink it,

to tell him again it tastes just like every other coffee he's brought because she's simple like that and not refined like him (and they'd all think he'd be the rough one, huh? just like they all used to think he would not resist life at sea, that he'd snap, that he'd get laughed at, harassed, raped and marooned anywhere by a shipful superstitious sailors,

but look at him now)- bringing her coffee from where the sun shines even in winter, and he know it tastes like nothing else but she'll just say it's

just like every other coffee he's ever brought,

but that she likes it all the same,

because he brought it for her. Or that should be what she should tell him if he happened to return at dawn,

but the wind is coming in from the open sea beyond these murky docks at three in the morning of the gloomiest Sunday in the world, and she's probably already left like that time he found her sleeping on the entrance steps, with the bags all ready to go but not going until she'd given him a last chance,

and she'd forgiven him that time,

but not this time, this time he's dreading to go back home, well, it's not home if she's not there, is it?

But he'll be damned if he ever tells her that. And she won't be home tonight when he comes stumbling in, half-drunk in akvavit and full-moon high tide, and smelling like tar and smoke, and face impassive because he doesn't know otherwise,

face impassive and eyes steely and lips straight and narrow and chapped,

and she won't have him tonight, she'll be gone, she won't have him. It kills him mostly when he knows that for all the agony he may feel in this life she'll never be able to tell, whether she's around of not because he cannot tell her, he could never tell her anything because he's just not designed to work like that,

it kills him because it never mattered much, because she always had him nonetheless. Stone-cold eyes and unchanging expression, voice even, thoughts collected.

He's not got a coin in his pockets to buy her flowers to apologize (but she won't be home, Noreg, she won't be home tonight, he tells himself)

but at three in the morning?

He may be so ruefully desperate that he'd swim to pluck anemones from King Triton's garden if that meant he'll have a chance to try and see her again, tonight, tomorrow, see her beautiful bright eyes and that stupid, annoying smile she only smiles at him, the sailor smile he loves and he'll just blank, he knows, deadpan, thrust the flowers in her hands and tell her,

I'm sorry. I was wrong. I regret it. I'm sorry.

Because he does love her more than anything else in the world, and how does he always end up doing that, going for a walk in the docks and smoking her cigarettes; no, before that…? How does he always end up storming out of the house, after yelling at her, after being yelled at back and after being looked at with those amazing eyes clouding? And he leaves?

His feet are carrying him on their own past the shipyard-graveyard, past that one ship he knows so well and he'll be sailing to Port Moresby tomorrow,

I wish you stayed longer, she told him-

I can't stand being on land so long. You know it, he answered her, so dull, so unnecessarily harsh,

You should take me, you know, Nor? You know I love to go sailing. she said, I'll dress up and be your cousin, imagine that? I'll be Danish. You'll call me Matthias, or idiot, like you always call me, and I'll call you Nor. It's clever, huh? I'll be the king of the seas, and we'll travel everywhere together! And when no one sees us, we can be us again and I'll let you kiss me, 'cause you know you'll be dying to. But only if no one is looking, because how manly would that be huh? If they saw us?

That's the most stupid thing you've said since I returned, he told her, and that's where he'd gone wrong at first, and he'd continued to say the wrong thing time after time and looking regretless, until-

Well do, do me a favor and DROWN if you-

he had noticed then, only too late, too late when he wasn't yelling anymore at her and she was not yelling any more back at him, but looking at him with those eyes, those eyes,

I'll be going out now, he said quiet and even and so painfully like nothing had happened,

and now that he is standing again before their entrance door again and somehow, the chimes hanging over the potted plant, the windows at the front facing the sea and the horizon blue and distant and so, so familiar, he wishes he was a better man than he is, but that's all he can offer if she ever crosses his life again, right? Because he is so afraid to come in and find her gone. But she is gone. He knows she is, she should be, she would be an idiot if she hadn't, but he's lived with her for many years now, when he's been home on land. He hates being on land.

'But I don't hate being home,' he says, leaning his forehead against the red-painted wood of the front door and his voice is even and emotionless and tired, only that it is not truly emotionless because of the words he's said-

'I know you don't,' she tells him.

She's frowning and he can tell it from her voice, and he is at a loss and his head aches. She must be standing behind him.

'I'm sorry, 'Tilde.'

'I know,' he hears her fidget and he wishes he saw her, but he isn't feeling brave enough to look her in the eyes. 'I followed you,' she adds. 'I shouldn't have, but I followed you, Nor. I hope you aren't mad at me.'

'You should be mad at me.'

'I know you too well, silly,' she surprises him by saying, comes up to him, circles his waist with her familiar arms and rests her head between his shoulder blades. 'Come inside, now,' she offers, and he lets her offer, but does he deserve it?

'I'm sorry,' he says again, she pulls from his wrist and pulls him inside, and the house is cold and a wisp of sea air comes in with them- 'Come with me tomorrow,' he tells against her lips when she kisses him, and against her smile when she smiles at him,

'Right away, cap'n, and you can't back down now,'

He shakes his head, because he can't speak and he doesn't want to think, but as she hums an old sailor song that rings slightly familiar and smiles at him, he looks back at her blankly and she's forgiven him again and he damn sure does not deserve it, he might be smiling back, and he idly wonders how he'll love her the more out in the open sea.

A/N

These AUs write themselves I swear to you guys. I wrote it a bit weird, so basically what's going on is that Noreg is a sailor who's about to leave town, and Mathilde tells him she wants to go with him this time, that she can pretend to be a guy (clearly, in the 1950s, being a sailor and a woman wasn't compatible)

Also, Norway x Fem!Denmark is a total win guys, honest.

'Sjømannsvise' means 'seaman's song/tune' in Norwegian, and it's the title of a very pretty song by gnom. Actually this fic was inspired by two songs they sing: 'Mathilde' and 'Sjømannsvise'.

I hope you enjoyed!