Interval

They were trapped. Berwald was trapped by his duty, and Tino by his need to be near his love – neither would leave the household, so they were still together, even after the engagement. And they were together in every sense of the word.

"Berwald has fallen," Mathias murmured, his fingers tracing gentle patterns on Lukas' chest. The time was uncertain, but they lay together in the pearly grey hours before the dawn, where everything is still simply for want of stillness before the sunrise.

"He will rise again," was Lukas' reply. His ink-stained fingers tangled into Mathias' wild, sun-coloured locks, carding his fingers through it as if committing the feeling to memory. "I've seen the way he looks at Tino. He will never let him go."

"Can it be possible, though?" Sitting up, Mathias rested his chin on Lukas' bare chest, pulling the blankets tighter around them. "He is getting married, after all…"

Lukas only regarded him with a look some would call cold, others resentful, and others, maybe the most perceptive of them all, would call it carefully hidden sadness.

"You have a wife. You have a son named Marten and a daughter named Emilie, and your wife is expecting again. Don't tell me that affairs within a marriage aren't possible."

"This is different!" The Dane sat up properly, his broad back against the headboard of Lukas' bed. Even without seeing it, Lukas knew the exact place where an old scar met a birthmark on that back. He had touched it, rubbed his hands over it, kissed it – more than he knew Mathias' wife had ever done. "You and I were always destined for each other!"

"And yet here we are. One married, one engaged, and secretly meeting under the cover of night and sheets."

Mathias had no answer for that. Instead, he had to pick up on the one topic in which he could challenge Lukas, to compensate for being repeatedly challenged.

"So you are engaged?"

"Natalya's father handed her over without a second word," Lukas brushed off. "He longs to be rid of her."

"I thought she was only his ward?"

"She's his bastard child by a mistress." Lukas' tone was routinely blunt even when talking about something so sensitive. "She's only useful if she can marry."

"And Yekaterina?" Back to Berwald's fiancée, the plump, pretty lady with an anxious smile and fine hair. "She's his lawful child, isn't that so?"

Lukas nodded, turning onto his side so he could look up at Mathias, watching the way his kiss-swollen lips moved as he talked, the faint dusting of freckles on his nose barely visible in the dim light.

"Right." Silence fell; discussing those in their social circle wasn't a regular habit, and fell awkwardly between them. The only sounds were Mathias fidgeting between the sheets, entwining and separating his fingers.

Then – "I'm going to name my next son after you."

"What?" Lukas sat up at that, brushing his hair back and staring, surprised, at Mathias. "Why on Earth would you do that?"

"I want a small part of you around me every single day, Lukas," the Dane confessed, a little smile crooking on his lips. "You mean so much to me. If I can't do it any other way –"

"I'm not trying to take you on a guilt trip, Mathias –"

"But I feel the guilt!" He reached out, wrapping his hand around Lukas'. "Will you let me do this? And let me name you godfather?"

"I can't stop you," was Lukas' reply – but the twitch of his lips and the tightening of his fingers in Mathias' spoke more than he ever would.

Weddings were planned. Berwald would marry mere weeks before Tino's nineteenth birthday; he would attend the wedding, as a valet and nothing more.

If our world was ruled by the stars, it would be Tino standing in the place of the bride. But our world is not ruled by the stars, and we mortals are prey to the complex social rules of the game that is our lives. My love with Mathias bent those rules – we skirted around the pieces, fearful of disturbing them.

The love between Berwald and Tino would topple the pieces and carve new ones from the rubble of the broken board.

A/N: Not so much a filler chapter as a 'straightening out the universe' chapter, just setting up the whole scene for Act Two. And sorry it's so much DenNor, but I thought they were the best medium for saying all this stuff without it seeming strange!

(Mathias' wife is Belle, or Belgium, for anyone who is still wondering!)