Chapter Text
margu was, jesper thinks, one of the best listeners he’s ever met.
not that she understood a word out of his mouth, of course, but he didn’t understand her, either, so it evened out. he would talk (and talk and talk) about everything and nothing, about things he didn’t even tell alva or klaus, and she would watch him seriously with big, blue eyes. he’d never admit it, but that kid might just have been jesper’s best friend.
not that anyone else needed to know, anyway.
“so i got sent off to boot camp,” jesper was saying, because although he may have repaired his relationship with his father somewhat- repaired in the way that leaks in a hull are patched until returned to port- the bad feeling had been there too long to be completely forgotten, and margu nods along sagely as if she understood. “like some kind of naughty kid. who does that?”
she followed him occasionally on his routes, trailing along as he delivered letters and packages through town and trying to match her strides to his own, stepping in the prints his boots left in the snow. he pushes the door to the post office open with his hip, listening to her chatter on at him in saami, opening his mouth to respond when her words lull.
“sounds like a tough break, postman,” drawls a familiar voice, and jesper freezes. “this must have seemed like a vacation to you after all that. smeerensburg’s known for its quaint townsfolk and scenic views, after all.”
the smile slips off jesper’s face like oil on water when he catches sight of mogens, the other man reclined in jesper’s usual chair, his boots (muddy, of course) propped up on the desk and crossed at the ankle, his hands folded behind his head as he leans back on the chair’s rear two legs.
jesper hopes, somewhat uncharitably, that it breaks beneath him.
“what do you want now?” he asks plaintively, letting the door fall shut behind him. margu scuttles past him with her own bag full of letters- considerably smaller than his own, but though jesper may have been reformed in his own way, hard work was still not his forte and every bit of help was appreciated- to the low table in the corner that alva had set up for her with a knowing look; the girl knew enough to recognize klaus’s name, so jesper always let her sort out letters to their friend from the rest of the mail.
“who says i want something?” mogens pulls his feet off the desk, the chair’s two front legs clattering against the floor. instead he slumps in his seat and clasps his hands over his stomach, tilting his head back a bit to meet jesper’s eye under the brim of his cap and give a lazy, smug smile reminiscent of their first meeting all those months ago. “can’t a man just come to see if he’s got mail?”
jesper’s frown deepens, his own mouth pressing into an irritated line. he makes a show of rifling through his satchel as if looking for letters addressed to mogens, and then shrugs helplessly. “nope, nothing. now go, i’ve got work to do.”
mogens looks him up and down- just once, but it’s enough to make jesper fidget- before rolling his eyes and clambering to his feet with a groan, popping his back. he gives jesper another look, somewhere halfway between a smirk and a sneer, but he only makes it halfway to the door before margu pipes up, and both men pause to look at her.
“jesper!” she chirps and waves him over, and when he comes and looks at her desk he finds she hasn’t emptied a single letter from her bag. instead she’s pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, and across the page has scribbled out a drawing: to jesper it looks like one of those old steam ships, an iron behemoth of an icebreaker, with colorful pennants streaming from its masts and black smog billowing from its smokestacks.
he’s not sure where she would have seen a ship like that- he’d only ever seen them at dock in kristiania- but she distracts him by tugging at his sleeve and rattling something off in saami, the words sounding like they were tripping off her tongue.
“for me?” he can hear mogens say behind him, a curious lilt to his voice, the floorboards creaking beneath his boots as he steps closer; jesper does his best to keep still when the other man leans past his shoulder to see. he can just barely glimpse the other man’s face from the corner of his eye, but mogens’s movements are careful when he goes to grab the picture.
when jesper turns to look he find’s mogens’s expression free of its usual edge, not easy to read but at least more open: surprised, and a look that on anyone else jesper would have called soft. it’s a strange look on the ferryman, he decides, one he hasn’t seen before.
it looks odd on him. odd, but not bad.
“giitu, unge,” mogens says gruffly after a moment, and margu’s face lights up as he carefully folds the drawing and slips it into his coat. jesper knows his mouth is hanging open- he’d never imagined that mogens even knew how to say the words thank you, let alone in saami- but mogens seems to neither care nor notice as he ruffles margu’s hair with one big hand before making for the post office’s single door. “be seeing you then, postman.”
“hey, what?” jesper manages, feeling a bit adrift. “where are you going?”
“to get a drink,” mogens answers, and he pauses to flash jesper a sharp grin before slipping out the door. “you’ve got a tab running, right?”