"Let's dance."

Durbe smiles as he takes Nasch's hand. He puts his other hand on Nasch's waist, not stopping to look into his eyes and Nasch keeps staring back.

"I don't want to dance." He tries to tell him gently, but Durbe just laughs.

"No excuses, my friend." So Nasch reluctantly puts his free hand on Durbe's shoulder. The air around them is cold and it freezes his bare fingers. He's used to rather warm winters and this year, it's way too cold for him, so the warmth of Durbe's shoulder feels kind of nice beneath his fingers and then Durbe pulls him just a little closer, close enough that he can feel his warm breath hitting his face. Being close to Durbe's body somehow makes him forget about the cold air.

He looks into the soft eyes, hears Durbe's joyful laughter as they slowly start moving. It's just the two of them on the large balcony and there's no music, so Durbe counts after each step they take, one, two, three, one, two, three, and it's not bad.

The lack of music doesn't bother him at all and having Durbe's deep voice guiding their movements is nice. Somehow Nasch has never really liked most of the dances he learned as a child and Merag hates dancing anyway, so he never cared enough about dancing and simply lets Durbe take the lead, which feels weird, but at the same time also feels really okay.

He just keeps following Durbe's lead, adjusts to his movements and mostly tries to not make a complete fool out of himself. Which is not that easy and it takes his full attention to not step on Durbe's feet, but it gets easier after a while as he starts remembering the moves, though Durbe still seems to be rather amused by Nasch's afford.

"A king who can't even dance." He chuckles and Nasch's now completely forgotten the cold air around him, barely registered the small snowflakes falling around him, dancing along with them.

"That's just because you're leading."

"Are you sure about that, my friend?" Durbe grins and lets his hand slip up, brushing a strand of hair out of Nasch's face and then putting his hand on Nasch's shoulder. Nasch hesitantly slides his hands on Durbe's waist, as Durbe stops moving, expectantly looking at Nasch.

So Nasch tries to remember how this dancing thing worked, which is actually pretty hard without Durbe guiding him along. He tries to take a step forward with his right leg as Durbe steps back with his left one, but then doesn't know how to go on, so they're just standing there in this position, while the snow keeps falling around them and he sees the afford it takes for Durbe to bite back his laughter.

"So, does that mean you really are a king who can't dance?"

"Just shut up and teach me, Durbe."