Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It begins innocently enough.

It’s Thierry Baudet who suggests a drink after a tedious and not particularly interesting debate that drags on until half-past midnight. Somewhere along the line, just a drink morphs into a proposed drink-off between party leaders “because the real measure of a leader is how well they hold their liquor, not a debate,” according to Thierry. He assumes he won’t be needed, but then Sigrid begs off, preoccupied with something, and he’s roped in to represent D66 despite his protests.

They wind up in the backroom of a brown café with cozy, wooden walls stained by smoke, crowded around a table that is barely big enough to hold their drink glasses as they accumulate. Although they’re often at odds, Rob generally finds the other party leaders to be good company - with the exception of Wilders, who isn’t there, having turned up his nose at the invitation as if the mere concept of having fun was beneath him. Rutte had waved them away, too, along with several others, leaving him, Thierry, Jesse, Lilian, and Sylvana to their debauchery.

“You know what I think?” Thierry slurs, somewhere between five or six shots into this game and clearly being bested by his own competition. “Fuck Rutte. Fuck all of them. Rob, get D66 to jump ship, and us - we… the five of us, we form our own coalition. Rope in Labour, the stupid animal party, a few others, and bam! There you have it: a band of misfit parties running the country.”

“That would never in a million years work,” Jesse tells him, arms folded on the table and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up with his suit jacket slung over his chair. He’s flushed, Rob can’t help but notice, from the drink and the heat of the little room. Disheveled, too. It isn’t unattractive. “Our two parties in a coalition together? Can you imagine the disaster that would be?”

“Well, at least we’d get the formation done quicker than they will,” Lilian remarks, and they all laugh. 

“It would be a miracle if we lasted a month,” Rob pipes up as he meets Jesse’s eyes across the table and raises his glass with a wink. “But we’d go down in flames and in history, that’s for sure.”

It isn’t lost on Rob that he sometimes feels as though he gets on better with the opposition than with his own coalition. He’s adept at toeing the party line, and yet more and more now, he feels restricted by it rather than beholden to it. He will never admit it to anyone - least of all anyone here - but sometimes he wishes he’d found his way into GreenLeft instead, where he could focus on environmental issues without being bogged down by all the other partisan nonsense.

They down another round of shots, and Sylvana taps out to the sound of Thierry’s cheers. Rob’s vision has gone a bit fuzzy, and he can hear the sound of blood pumping behind his ears, but he’ll be damned if Thierry outdoes him; he’s nothing if not competitive. Jesse appears to be keeping pace with both of them, occasionally glancing over at him across the table from underneath his mop of curly hair with a conspiratorial look in his eye. In the dim orange light, as they grow increasingly drunk, he is all Rob can see.

He can’t stand the way he looks at him. They could be in a crowd of hundreds, and he’ll look at him as if there isn’t another soul in the world. As if they were alone. Sometimes, he wishes they could be.

He shakes his head, takes a sip of water, and banishes that thought before it can take hold.

Lilian is the next to bite the dust and leaves with Sylvana to catch a cab. By then, Thierry is barely coherent but insistent on continuing, and it takes both him and Jesse to get the man up and outside onto the street before he loses all control over his motor skills. The two of them may be smaller, but they both hold their liquor better - at least that’s what Rob convinces himself until he tries to stand and finds himself wobbling too.

“I have to say,” Thierry tells them, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand as if trying to clear them, “you two tree-hugging bastards did better than I thought. I demand… I demand a rematch. I’ll never concede-”

“There, there, President Trump. Some other time,” Jesse says as they lug Thierry over to a cab and all but toss him in the back seat.

He lands with the grace of a bag of dirt, and it takes a bit of maneuvering to get his long legs inside, too, before they slam the car door shut and send him on his way.

Once they’re alone, Rob finally comes back to himself and looks over at Jesse. It’s late, far later than either of them should have stayed out, and the only lights on the street around them pour out from the bars and restaurants nearby, all buzzing with laughter. They haven’t had a chance to say a proper hello yet, even though they’ve been together all evening. Jesse is rumpled and reddened, holding his suit jacket over one arm, and it feels as if he’s seeing him for the first time without the incessant chatter of the others. Rob is sure he must look a mess too, but the liquor has him running so hot he hardly cares.

“Well,” Jesse tells him as he glances back over his shoulder in the direction the cab had driven, “I think this means we’re victorious.”

“As I recall,” Rob quips, “there can only be one winner.”

“Ah,” Jesse acknowledges with a raise of his eyebrows. “In that case, I’ll forfeit the title to you.”

He places his hands on his hips. “Giving up a win? That’s unlike you.”

“Call it my new leaf,” Jesse says with a shrug and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“Getting a cab?”

“No. I don’t know. I-” he runs a hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes closed. “I can’t go home like this. My wife will kill me.”

“My flat is a few blocks over,” he finds himself suggesting before he can recognize how bad an idea that is. “You can sober up there, come on.”

Jesse nods, and they set off down the paved stone street in what Rob is fairly certain is the direction of his flat. It’s the tail end of summer, and The Hague city center is alive with patrons in every pub soaking up the last few days of the season, although it’s just begun to sprinkle rain, driving most of them indoors. By the time they’re halfway to his flat, the sprinkle has turned into an outright downpour, but they slosh their way through the streets regardless, unbothered and chatting idly. They’re old friends, and in the world of politics, where he’s often unable to tell friend from foe, there is an undeniable comfort he feels in Jesse’s presence that he doesn’t often find in this city.

“It’s good to see you,” Rob tells him as he hops over a puddle of rainwater in an attempt to salvage his leather shoes. Drunk as he is, he can’t quite manage it. “It’s been too long.”

“I know. I’ve been busy. So have you. Ever plan on forming a cabinet, by the way?”

He snorts. “Very funny. If it were up to me, it would’ve been done months ago. But it isn’t up to me. I’m just a cog in the D66 machine.”

“You need to start by getting rid of Rutte,” Jesse tells him, not bothering to hide his scorn for the man. “The man’s a dinosaur, and he’s out of touch. Aligning your party with him will only drag D66 down after this ridiculous business with Omtzigt.”

They round a corner and approach his building as the storm picks up, howling around them.

“Take that up with Sigrid,” he yells over the sound of the wind. “She’s party leader now, not me. And he isn’t out of touch. Haven’t you seen he rides his bike to work every day?” There’s a lilt of sarcasm in his tone, and he meets his eyes with a cheeky grin. “I, for one, find that extremely relatable.” 

Jesse laughs as Rob unlocks the front door and flips on the light in the stairwell, climbing up two flights and coming to a stop in front of his door. He fumbles with his keys for a minute, partly because of his inebriated state and partly because of his nerves. His brain is too hazy to be aware of much, but he’s very much cognizant of the fact that they’re alone together.

He offered to help him sober up. Nothing more. But Rob wonders if he has an ulterior motive even he himself isn’t aware of, something primal and beastly lurking under his skin.

His flat is a small one bedroom with a little living space and kitchen, although the high ceilings and bright walls make it feel larger. It’s a pied-à-terre that he only uses when in town for work on weekdays, and as a result, he’s never spent much time furnishing it beyond the essentials. The marble countertops and modern finishings have always made it feel a bit cold and unlived in. It isn’t his home, but it serves its purpose well enough.

They both peel off their shoes and drenched socks in the doorway, and Jesse takes it upon himself to plop down on his sofa with a sigh, shaking off his wet curls like a dog. He unbuttons his shirt as if that will dry him off faster, exposing the undershirt beneath, along with the very top of his collarbone, all damp and gleaming with beads of rainwater clinging to it. It has a sharp but graceful angle, one Rob wonders what it would be like to run his tongue along. He’s never seen him so undone before, and he wonders too what it would be like to undo him even further, but he casts the thought aside and goes to fetch both of them a glass of water.

“Thank you,” Rob utters sarcastically as he offers him his glass, “for getting my sofa wet too.”

“Sorry.” Jesse runs a hand over his face and takes the water. “God, do you remember why we agreed to this? I’m going to feel like hell tomorrow.”

“I didn’t agree to anything. I was peer-pressured,” he objects and goes to stand behind the counter. He feels the need to put distance between them for his own good. For Jesse’s, too. “But I do think we should make sure the entire Kamer knows we beat Thierry at his own game.”

“Oh, that goes without saying.” There’s a pause, and then Jesse takes a look around with bleary eyes. “Ever thought of putting up any paintings on the walls? Or, you know, decorating at all?”

He shrugs off his suit jacket and hangs it over one of his barstools, then smooths out the cuffs of his shirt, something he catches himself doing whenever he’s on edge. 

“All I do is sleep here. I’m always at work.”

“Mmm. Yes, you’re quite the workaholic.”

He knows he is but scoffs at that, putting up at least some semblance of a fight. “I am not.”

“Yes, you are. Aren’t you on like six committees?”

“Seven.”

“See?” Jesse remarks. “Worse than I thought. You need a hobby.”

“I have hobbies.”

“Such as?” He tries to think and comes up empty. Jesse raises an eyebrow. “My point exactly.”

They fall into an easy silence for a while as they sip their water. Jesse isn’t doing anything, just slouching on the sofa with one arm slung casually over the back and peering over at him in that soft, smoldering, silent way he always does, with his head tilted forward slightly and his eyes heavily-lidded. Usually, he doesn’t let himself pay it much attention, but it’s affecting him differently tonight; it’s hotter than it has any right to be. He can feel it like a fingernail scraping down his spine, from the crown of his head down to his toes, and then back up again.

Has it grown warmer in here? He’s soaked to the bone and, by all accounts, should be freezing, but he feels like he’s broken into a sweat up and down his body. His tie suddenly feels like it’s strangling him, and he loosens it, feeling Jesse’s eyes on him still.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Rob finally rasps, but he doesn’t put much - if any - conviction behind the words, and they end up sounding like a plea to do just the opposite. Ever perceptive, he’s sure Jesse notices, but he can only hope he’s still drunk enough not to.

“This again? You’re as bad as those people on TikTok. I told you I don’t do it on purpose,” Jesse insists. “Those are just my eyes.”

He makes a face to indicate that he doesn’t buy that, not at all. “Sure.”

“For the record, it was you that started all this when you admitted you like to flirt with me. And your…” He drifts off, shifting in his seat. He almost looks flustered, that veneer of cool, calm, and collected slipping for a moment. “Your winking that you do.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“Yes. Entirely your fault.”

Rob laughs and leans his weight on the counter, arms outstretched. He feels soberer than he did before, the liquor supplanted in his veins by pure adrenaline. He has a heightened awareness of everything around him, particularly when it comes to the man in front of him; every rise and fall of his chest, the flick of his eyes upward to glance at him, the way he runs his tongue across his bottom lip after taking a drink of water. The way he looks with soaking wet curls tumbling in his face and warmth pooling in those dark eyes. It’s unfair, really. Downright fucking sinful. He’s well aware that he put them in this situation and has no one to blame but himself, but he doesn’t want to blame himself. Not even a little.

He just wants more.

“Ever wondered what it would be like?” he hears himself saying, and he knows in that instant that he’s gone mad.

He doesn’t need to be more specific for Jesse to pick up on his meaning. Surprisingly, he doesn’t flinch but does make a solid attempt at deflecting. 

“The Internet seems to have done that for us,” he replies, clearing his throat.

“Not them. You.”

Jesse has always been exceedingly difficult to read, and Rob finds him no different now. He doesn’t so much as blink at the suggestion, and he wonders if he’s simply too drunk to understand or if he has wondered. His heart thrashes like a wild animal caged behind his ribs, and he struggles to maintain a lacquer of calm over his features in the brief silence that follows.

He wonders if Jesse is waging a similar internal battle. If he is, he hides it well.

“Why do you ask, Mr. Jetten?” he replies at last, far too casually, and takes a long sip of water while holding his gaze.

Mr. Jetten. The teasing honorific nearly makes him lose it, and neither of them can afford that. He has a perfect partner; Jesse, a perfect wife and family. People have called him many things over the years, but he won’t let ‘homewrecker’ be added to the list. He’s acutely aware of how dangerous this situation has become and how desperately he needs to extricate himself from it, so he stands up straight, pretending as if he’s only just noticed his damp clothing.

“I’m going to change,” he announces. “Want something too?”

He turns and starts toward the bedroom, hearing Jesse call out behind him, “What would my wife think if I came home in another man’s clothes?”

Dammit. In all fairness, he set himself up for that one.

He needs more than a change of clothes - a cold shower seems like a good idea - but he settles for only the former, pulling a shirt and sweatpants from his closet. He can’t say why he doesn’t swing the door shut behind him or why he steps forward to be visible in the space he’d left ajar that he knows perfectly well has a line of sight into the living room. He refuses to admit it to himself as if doing so will give him an out or some sort of plausible deniability he can fall back on later. He faces the wall as he strips and pulls on the dry clothing, going slower than he otherwise might and swearing he can feel eyes on him all the while. He’ll blame it on the liquor if asked, even though his judgment feels as clear as it’s ever been.

He steps back out to find Jesse right where he’d left him, still planted on the sofa and leaning back with his legs spread slightly.

“Still thirsty?” Rob asks. There is an endearing flash of confusion in Jesse’s eyes, so he nods down at his glass to clarify. “Your glass is empty.”

“Oh,” he mutters as if he’s only just realized. There is faint color on his cheeks, confirmation enough that he’d seen exactly what was intended for him. “Yeah, thanks.”

He fills both their glasses again, and they stay like that until they’ve drained them once more, the tension hanging thick in the air, with Jesse on the sofa and him at his place behind the counter. The walls feel like they’ve closed in, leaving them with no other option than to get closer, and all Rob can do is watch him with what he’s sure is raw, barely-concealed hunger in his eyes. It’s been ages since he felt anything like this, skin-deep and burning him alive, a forest fire ignited by a single spark. He has no idea how he’s lost control of himself so thoroughly.

The liquor. The liquor and something that was there all along, hibernating, waiting to be awoken inside him.

Abruptly, Jesse stands and clears his throat, breaking the spell. “I should get going. I have a full day of meetings tomorrow, so.”

A sort of panic shoots through Rob, bringing him back down to earth. He can’t deny there’s an icy pang of disappointment that follows. What did he expect would happen tonight, realistically? There can never be anything between them, regardless of whatever foolish attraction might exist, whatever harmless flirting and lingering stares they might share from time to time. It would be stupid. It could ruin their lives and their careers if they gave in to it, and still, he can’t help but wonder.

Rob feigns indifference, though he’s sure his initial pause has already given him away. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

He watches as Jesse taps away on his phone, summoning a cab, then sets about buttoning his dress shirt. He still isn’t sober enough to manage it, though, and after watching him struggle for several minutes, Rob finally rolls his eyes and walks over to where he stands near the door. That’s his fatal misstep: closing the gap between them. 

He recognizes this, and he proceeds anyway.

“Here. I got it.”

Jesse lets his arms drop down to his sides with a sigh of frustration, and Rob notices him glance down at his fingers as they slip the buttons through their holes, beginning at the top and working his way down lower, then lower still, until they graze his belt buckle. He’s so close to him he can hardly breathe; it’s like Jesse has sucked all the oxygen out of the room just by virtue of his presence. He should stop this madness and move away while he still can, he knows this, but his better judgment long ago vacated the premises. He manages to steady his hands, but nothing else about him is steady at all.

The last thing he remembers before they collide is going for the final button.

He can’t say which one of them makes the first move. It’s possible they both do at the same time, in tune with each others’ rhythm as they always have been. Jesse kisses like a dam breaking, pent-up water surging forth, and all he can do is take him in.

He wants this. The realization is like a drumbeat behind Rob’s eyes, hypnotic and all-pervading. He wants this, he wants him, and he always has, damn the consequences.

Everything fades into a blur of rustling fabric and heavy breathing, and firm, wandering hands. Somehow, although he has no memory of it, they end up in the bedroom, ripping the clothing off of each other as if they can’t remove it fast enough. He isn’t certain if Jesse has ever been with a man, but judging by the confidence with which he moves and the sheer lack of hesitation, he must be no stranger to this type of attraction. The thought makes him harden in his briefs, breath hitching in his throat. He should feel at least some form of trepidation, he thinks, but his nerves are eerily calm, his mind shutting off and his body setting itself on autopilot. This feels so natural, so easy. Like giving in to gravity.

He should’ve known better than to think he could outrun a force of nature like him.

“Was this your plan all along?” Jesse pants as he tugs Rob’s shirt off, casting the offending thing aside.

“Was it yours?” he retorts, and the other man gives him a sideways grin as he does away with his pants next.

“I asked first.”

He feels far drunker now than he has at any point tonight, intoxicated by something he doesn’t have a name for; hormones or pheromones or oxytocin, or perhaps all three. They’re on the bed before he has time to think up a response, and it’s probably for the best because he’ll go to his grave before ever admitting the truth. There’s nothing slow or tender in the way they move. It all happens quicker than his brain can process: Jesse climbing atop him, reaching for the bottle of lube Rob had taken from the nightstand and smoothing it onto his cock from the tip to the root in a way that leads him to believe he’s most certainly done this before. He watches, rapt, stroking himself idly beneath him.

He’d never had much of a doubt that Jesse would be a top, with his dominant and forceful nature, and it’s so hot to watch him take control he thinks his heart could give out right here, right in this bed. His body feels like a live wire, cock pulsing like a lightning rod, all electric and all too much. He can’t stop shuddering in anticipation, and as Jesse urges him to lie back fully, he abandons all pretense, giving himself over to the wanting.

He sucks in a breath and hooks his legs around him, elevating his hips for better access, and Jesse seems about to make his move when suddenly-

“You’re sure?” he asks, reaching down to touch his cheek in the most disarming way.

A moment of clarity pierces through the chaos, like a fever breaking. He has no idea how there could be any doubt he isn’t sure. They’re miles past the point of no return; they were past the point of no return the second they stepped into his flat, or maybe even before that, or maybe they always have been as long as they’ve known each other. There’s no going back now. This is their mistake, and it feels as if it were a long time in the making.

All he can muster is a moan, “Yes… Yes, I’m - fuck, please just-”

The world fades away when he sinks into him, burying his face into his neck with a groan. All at once, there is no outside world, nothing beyond these four walls or this bed. Only them. Only this.

He feels big, fucking enormous inside him, but there’s no pain, either; his body takes him in with no resistance, like a cast molded from him, for him. Usually, he needs more time to be opened up and teased before he can let anyone fuck him, but he doesn’t seem to need anything other than just his kiss, and he thinks briefly that he’s been ready for this longer than he’d even known. Only a few times in his life has sex ever made him feel anything remotely like this, stripped away from the pressed suits and poise that make him who he is to the outside world and operating solely on animal instincts.

He can’t bear to look Jesse in the eyes for more than a few seconds as he moves atop him. He’s scared if he does, he’ll come apart right then and there. He thinks he might die. Or fall in love. 

He can’t decide if that would be a fate worse than death.

He can feel Jesse pull out all of a sudden, and he’s about to protest when he feels him placing his hands on his hips, urging him to roll over onto his hands and knees instead. The transition is effortless, gentle, the new position so erotic that he pants like an animal in heat when he fucks into him from behind, deeper this time and at precisely the right angle. His cock is curved perfectly to drive against that sensitive spot inside him, the one that makes him melt into a panting, writhing puddle and rock back against him in frantic search of more. He’s never been particularly loud in bed, but the moans Jesse draws out of him are downright indecent, low, tremulous, desperate sorts of sounds from deep in his throat. He plays him like a conductor, directing his symphony. It terrifies him to think that anyone has this kind of power over him.

Especially him. God, him, of all fucking people-

He can’t manage to keep himself propped up on his hands and ends up on his elbows before long, letting him fuck him into the mattress with deep, dizzying strokes. Rob can feel him reaching around to stroke his cock while leaning down to lay kisses along his spine at the same time, and that is all it takes for him to fall to pieces, his vision whiting out and a cry he doesn’t recognize as his own leaving his lips. It’s too much all at once, his senses overloaded and his body shuddering in ecstasy as he spills into his palm, dripping onto the sheets. Jesse continues undaunted, working every drop out of him until he’s oversensitive and has nothing more to give.

He’s dimly aware of Jesse following him not long after, his rhythm breaking as his grip on his hips tightens. He comes inside him with a shout, a hot, fast rush deep inside him. Normally he doesn’t like the feeling, the odd indignity and the messiness of it all, but it feels so impossibly right to be full of him that he can’t help but moan again, clenching his lower muscles as if to hold it all inside.

He feels rabid, senseless. He wants every drop. Every bit of him he can get. All of it. Everything. Everything.

Rob has no idea how much time passes before he comes back to himself, flopping over onto his back. He’s panting so hard he feels lightheaded, still trembling with the aftershocks. He can feel Jesse doing the same beside him, hair frizzy and lips still damp from kissing him. It’s silent but for the sound of their labored breathing, both of them marveling at what they’ve done. He feels awe-struck, morbidly captivated, like somehow he’d looked away for one second, and the next thing he knew, they’d found themselves here. Like a car accident, or an explosion, or some other sort of disaster, natural or otherwise. Like everything changing in the blink of an eye, with the slow, creeping realization that it can never go back to the way it was before.

He’s terrified by it. He wants more. He feels insatiable, like no matter how many times he has him, it will never be enough.

“Fuck,” is all he can breathe as the true understanding of what they’ve just done comes crashing over him. He expects shame. Guilt. Fear. Regret. But none of those emotions present themselves. “Fuck. Holy fuck.”

Jesse, who has propped himself up with a few pillows, breathes out a laugh beside him. “Well said.”

There are so many things to be said, but the one Rob settles on is simply: “You need anything?”

He makes a move to leave the bed - for water or to clean himself up, or maybe to clear his head in the next room - but Jesse catches his wrist with a sort of desperation that makes him melt back into the sheets.

“No. Just you.”

As they drift off to sleep not long after, tangled up in each other like vines, Rob has the unnerving sense that they’ve lit a fire tonight they aren’t ever going to be able to contain. But he decides he’ll worry about that in the morning.

Chapter Text

The cabinet formation is, to use the technical term, a shitshow.

Talks between the major parties with incredibly opinionated leaders all over the political spectrum were never going to go smoothly. Still, Rob has been surprised by just how far things have devolved since the election, complicated by endless backbiting and backroom deals. Sigrid wants a more progressive coalition that their partners on the right will never abide, and whether they like it or not, they need each other for a majority. D66 has been about the only constant contender for the government. As a result, he’s found himself roped into far more late-night negotiations than he’d like and driven to smoke a bit more than usual in an effort to relieve some stress.

As talks drag on and they’re sent back to square one for the hundredth time, he is summoned to a meeting with party leaders and their deputies in a conference room in the old Ministry of Justice building in a last-ditch attempt to form a progressive coalition. Jesse is there but doesn’t greet him and makes a point of sitting as far away as he can manage at the long mahogany table. It pains him, although he doesn’t let it show, plastering on the look of practiced indifference that he's cultivated over the years.

Nearly two weeks have passed since that night, and they haven’t so much as said one word to each other, though it isn’t for lack of trying on his part. He'd woken in the morning with a screaming headache and an empty bed, Jesse having slipped away sometime during the night. He’s beginning to have the terrible sense that he ruined what might be his only real friendship in the Kamer, and the even worse sense that he would do it all over again if given the chance. He wants him again, in a way that he can’t tamp down or talk himself out of.

Running on only a few hours of sleep, Rob struggles to focus as the meeting drags into its second hour but perks up when a familiar voice fades into his consciousness.

“We’ll support a seventeen billion-dollar plan for targeted buyouts of farmers, but only seven billion is a non-starter. That won’t even make a dent in the nitrogen levels,” Jesse tells someone - probably Sigrid, Rob thinks, but he wasn’t paying close enough attention to know for sure. He glances over at Jesse, seated diagonally across the table, who appears to be making a concerted effort to seem unaware he's there at all. “And we want a carbon emissions reduction target of at least sixty percent by 2030. We won’t go lower than that.”

Sigrid exhales, looking just as exhausted as Rob feels. “Can GreenLeft work with fifty-five? The EU is at fifty-two. We would still be ahead of that.”

Jesse doesn’t so much as flinch. “No.”

Rob shifts in his seat and forces himself to look down at the pad of paper in front of him. He’s always found the way Jesse adheres to his beliefs undeniably attractive, and he still does, even though it is thwarting his party’s plans at the moment.

“What about fifty-seven?” Sigrid counters.

“It’s a more acceptable starting point, but I’m not ready to commit to that as the final number until I speak with my members.”

“All right.” She writes something in her notes, then leans forward slightly with her lips pressed into a grave line. “Now, we need to have a serious discussion about the partnership between you and Labour.”

“We can’t have both GreenLeft and Labour in the coalition,” someone chimes in gruffly from across the room. “That’ll pull us too far left, but we can live with one.”

“Well, as I’ve said many times already,” Jesse tells them, reclining his chair slightly and clicking a pen. Rob can tell he’s growing increasingly exasperated with these circular conversations, “it’s both or neither of us. If GreenLeft goes in alone, we’ll just be steamrolled and used as pawns to support more ineffectual centrist policies.”

“I promise you that isn’t our intent, Mr. Klaver, but both are not going to be included,” Sigrid says calmly, ever the diplomat. “As much as that would be D66’s preference, it’s a hard line for the others. Now, is there room for movement here or not? Something we can add to the coalition agreement that might make you reconsider?”

“I’m afraid not,” Jesse declares as he rises to his feet, buttoning his jacket and reaching for his notes. He nods at the crowd, though his eyes skip over Rob. “Good day, Sigrid. Gentlemen.”

Rob never had much doubt that the meeting would end this way, but Sigrid had insisted, clinging to her last shreds of hope that somehow she could persuade GreenLeft to drop Labour or vice versa after she hadn’t been able to force their partners on the right to tolerate both in the coalition as she’d hoped. He watches Jesse and an aide step out the door, then notices Sigrid giving him a pointed look while nodding in their direction, beckoning him to follow.

Dammit. He doesn’t know how he was appointed the unofficial liaison between their two parties - probably because Sigrid knows they’ve always been close - but it’s proving to be fucking inconvenient given the circumstances.

He steels himself and hurries out the door to follow the other man, who is already halfway down the hall by the time he reaches him.

“Jesse, wait.” 

He half-expects Jesse to ignore him, but fortunately, he doesn’t, turning around and waving his aide along. Rob waits until she has disappeared around the corner to speak, but his mouth feels dry, tongue cold and clumsy. He's missed him more than he will admit, even just as a friend, and two weeks without speaking may as well have been two decades.

“So that’s it?” he asks, his voice giving away more desperation than he’d like. Although Sigrid has a greater stake in this coalition coming to fruition than he does, he wants to work with him, too, for entirely selfish reasons. “GreenLeft is out?”

He expects a bit of gentleness in his eyes, or maybe some sort of collusive look that signals they’re still on the same side in this mess, but Jesse only fixes him with the even stare he would give anyone.

“Rutte and the Christian Democrats were never really open to working with us; you know that. They’re only here because Sigrid insisted. This is all a stupid formality, and I have better ways to waste my afternoon.”

“You’re the one who has to compromise,” he tries to reason with him, although in his panic, he flubs it significantly. “GreenLeft is the party that lost half its seats in the election-”

“Yes, thank you for reminding me. I’d forgotten.”

He folds his arms, and it’s a tiny movement, but Rob can tell it signals something closing off, a wall slamming up between them. Jesse softens for the briefest of moments as if he can tell he’d been too harsh but still doesn’t budge, as immovable as a stone and twice as obstinate.

“Look, we’ve been going in circles for weeks. Sigrid has backed herself into a corner hanging her hat on a progressive coalition. We don’t want to work with VVD and CDA, and they have no desire to work with us. Besides, GreenLeft is better in the opposition. We can actually stand for what we believe in instead of having to be hollow shills for the government.”

He picks up on his meaning at once. Although he’s heard that on social media dozens of times, Rob finds himself unprepared for how badly that stings coming from him, someone he's always imagined to be on his side even in the opposition.

“Like me?" he chokes out. "Is that what I am?”

There is a moment of silence between them, during which Jesse gives him a contrite look. Rob wishes more than anything that they didn’t have to work against each other like this. They would be so much more effective on the same team. They would’ve been good together in a coalition. They would be good together in other ways, too.

He jettisons that thought and comes back to his senses. This is neither the time nor the place.

“I didn’t say that,” Jesse relents, an implicit apology, but the damage is done.

“But you thought it.” Another pause follows before Rob finally dares to venture closer to the elephant in the room. He lowers his voice and glances around to ensure no one is watching them. “We need to talk.”

“No, I don’t think we do,” Jesse replies hastily and takes a step away to check the time on his phone. He’s running. Avoiding him. Maybe he’s just as scared of what will happen if they’re alone again as he is. “I’m late for a meeting as it is.”

All he can do is stand there uselessly as he watches him walk away, bathed in the golden rays of late afternoon sunlight from the large windows spanning the length of the hallway. He feels a sick feeling forming like a pit in his stomach, but it isn’t anger. Longing, rather. Violent, churning need. There is guilt somewhere in the mix, too, rearing its ugly head, but just as it does, he is yanked from his reverie by a jeering voice behind him.

“What’s the matter, Jetten? Lovers’ quarrel?”

Thierry Baudet strides along behind him on his way somewhere, tapping on his phone and glancing up just long enough to send him a smug grin. Although once Rob had embraced the teasing from his colleagues, now, it hits too close to home to be comfortable.

“Fuck off, Thierry.”

-

Coalition talks continue to lead nowhere, but the work of the Kamer doesn’t halt in the meantime. Budget season arrives, and his schedule becomes so grueling that most nights, he's barely able to sleep for a few hours before budget or coalition negotiations resume the following day. He only remembers to eat when his staff forces lunch on him, and even then, he usually takes it at his desk while prepping for a debate or catching up on emails. His partner remarks that work must be his true love with the amount of time he has spent in The Hague recently.

It could be that he’s spending more time there for other reasons. For the chance of seeing him, even if they won’t say a word to one another. But that is something he won’t admit even to himself.

His only outlet for relieving stress is running, which he makes a point of doing every morning, no matter how busy he might be. It's his one respite, the only way he can calm his tormented mind, which replays that night over and over and over again in a maddening loop. It meant nothing. It was a drunken mistake, better off forgotten, and he needs to let it go.

But the way Jesse had looked at him - that hadn’t been a mistake. That had been something far more dangerous, something he can’t let go.

He sets off on a run outside his flat in late September, just as the air has begun to cool and the leaves have begun to turn. He had dreamed of Jesse the night before and awoke rock-hard and soaked in sweat, with a furious need to purge all thoughts of him from his mind. It’s distracting him at work, clouding his judgment. Making him slip. So he runs and runs, faster and faster and further until his lungs burn and he can hardly breathe, but he doesn’t heed the pain in his body. He runs like something is chasing him, and he thinks something is.

It’s only after his legs nearly give out beneath him that he lets himself collapse onto a curb, breathing hard and feeling the world spin around him. He tugs the hood of his hoodie over his head and stares up at the overcast sky, pleading with a god he’s never believed in for some form of mercy.

An older woman stops and looks at him with a worried frown, bending over to ask, “Are you all right, dear?”

“Fine,” he manages to choke out. “I’m fine, thank you.”

He couldn’t be further from fine. The run failed to clear his head like it usually would; if anything, he feels like his pain has been amplified because he knows now there's no escaping it. He’s tried to run from the thought of Jesse’s furtive glances, the memory of his kiss, the thought of how his body had fallen open for him and then fallen apart, and he can’t. All at once, he knows why.

He can’t run from what has been inside him all along.

-

It’s a Wednesday in late September when everything boils over.

They’re set to debate funding in the budget to mitigate climate change and the nitrogen crisis. As the spokesman for climate issues in his party, naturally he's scheduled to speak in support of the government’s proposal to the Kamer. He runs through his talking points more than a dozen times and knows the statistics like the back of his hand, but he is uncharacteristically on edge as he approaches the rostrum.

He can only assume Jesse will stand and interrupt; it will be expected of him. He knows too that he will find the entire thing insufficient, but his hands are tied. Formation talks are ongoing, and a caretaker cabinet is always wary of making controversial spending decisions in a budget. Jesse understands these political realities, though he will conveniently choose to ignore them.

He’s a messenger preparing to be shot, and Rob supposes all he can do is let the bullets fly.

He runs through his speech with ease and takes the first few interruptions without many issues. The right thinks they’re doing too much, as usual, and the left thinks they’re doing too little. Thierry Baudet thinks the entire thing is nonsense, but then again, he regards everything they do as some degree of nonsense.

Then, always one to want the last word, Jesse stands and approaches the microphone in the front of the room to interrupt, hands folded calmly in front of him. Rob smooths down the front of his navy suit and tries not to appear as nervous as he is at the sight of him. He looks good, with curls just unruly enough to give him the appearance of an everyman, a suit that isn’t quite tailored close enough, and a stiff collared shirt. He searches his eyes briefly for any hint of recognition or flicker of emotion that indicates he remembers that night but comes up empty.

Rob lowers his eyes just as the speaker recognizes him, seeking salvation in his notes.

“Madam Speaker, you’ll have to forgive me, but I feel like I’m having deja vu,” he begins, tone almost friendly, although his words are not. “This is the second or third budget in a row that we’ve debated the issue of the nitrogen crisis, and we aren’t much further along in solving it than we were when we began. The plans that were just presented don’t have any new solutions, and we know what we are doing now is not working. How long, exactly, do D66 and the government plan to philosophize about solutions to the problem instead of taking action? Are we going to wait until every nature preserve in the Netherlands is a cesspool and our waterways are full of toxic algal blooms? Or until half our population is homeless because of the housing shortage? How long is it going to be?”

Rob waits to be recognized, then begins after his name is called to respond. 

“Madam Speaker, I agree completely; we have to be doing more to combat the nitrogen issue, and recent studies have shown that our current measures are not sufficient. Once we’ve formed a cabinet, I am sure we’ll begin the process of implementing stricter measures, but right now, this budget, is not the place for it.”

They return fire back and forth for a while, an old song and dance to which he long ago grew accustomed: GreenLeft will attack them for not doing enough because it’s their job; they will toe the party line and punt the issue as smoothly as they can. Sometimes his non-answers do make him hate himself. As the debate continues, Rob finds himself thinking this is probably what Jesse meant by ‘hollow shill for the government.’

When the thought crosses his mind, he stumbles, briefly losing momentum, and Jesse seizes on it to go on the offensive.

“Madam Speaker, I’m beginning to believe that the most dangerous party isn’t the Forum for Democracy or the other parties of populism who aren’t in government, but that of Mr. Jetten. Because D66 is in power, has been for years, and chooses, again and again, to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the issues that matter. They run on a platform of progress, but they aren’t progressive at all; in fact, they actively stifle change that would benefit both our country and our environment.”

He hurls the words like rocks, and they hit their mark with the rest of the Kamer, Rob can tell. They even hit their mark with him. There is a fire in his eyes; he’s intensely focused on him, gesturing with his hands, not shouting but speaking so confidently he doesn’t need to pause to think between words. Rob is humiliated, horrified, and transfixed all at the same time - because this is Jesse at his best, even though it’s being weaponized against him.

“Now that they’re the second-largest party, D66 can’t fall back anymore on the old excuse that their right-wing coalition partners won’t let them do this or that or the other thing. Perhaps they’ll finally have to take ownership over their own inaction.” He pauses, presumably for dramatic effect, and takes a look around at their colleagues. “Our planet is dying around us. We can’t afford to wait another budget, or two, or three, or whenever this government finally feels like getting around to doing something about it-”

Although it’s against the rules, he tries to cut in. “I don’t-”

“This caretaker cabinet is governing us as effectively as a shambling corpse. This budget won’t have any teeth or accomplish anything meaningful at all. People have lost faith. They feel their vote doesn’t matter, and why shouldn’t they when we’ve been waiting on the formation for almost half a year? So, I suggest that Mr. Jetten spend less time crafting his carefully rehearsed answers to our questions and more time getting on with the actual business of running the country.”

He’s too stunned even to breathe as he watches him step down from the microphone and return triumphantly to his seat, the sound of applause in the form of banging on desks washing over the room. Jesse has opposed him in debates before, of course, but usually goes easier on him; something about having a soft spot, Sigrid had teased once.

He’s only ever seen him show this sort of fury when debating an ogre like Baudet or Wilders, and he has never attacked him for what he knows is one of his weaknesses: coming across as too wooden, too prepared and robotic. ‘Robot Jetten’ has been a favorite insult of Twitter-goers for years, and it still gets to him, despite his best efforts to tune out the noise.

He fumbles his way through a rebuttal, but it’s weak, and if he were listening, he wouldn’t even believe himself. He steps down shortly afterward when it becomes clear there are no more interruptions and rests his head on his hand once in his seat, wishing he could fade into the walls around him. He can feel the mocking eyes on him, hear the laughter and jokes at his expense.

Fucking hell. He knows this will be trending on Twitter within the hour.

He hides away in his office once the debate concludes, and not long after he takes a seat at his desk, Sigrid comes charging in, blonde hair and red pantsuit turning her into the perfect physical embodiment of rage. Her face is locked in a disapproving glower, and the muscles in her jaw are rippling where she clenches it, but she moderates her tone when she begins to speak, at least as much as she's able.

“What the hell was that?” she demands, not loudly but in a low, dangerous way that frightens him far more than shouting would.

Rob massages his temples and braces himself for the lashing he deserves. “What?”

“What? Really?” She pauses, closing the door behind her far harder than she needs to, then leans forward over the back of one of his chairs. “Your performance out there. That was atrocious.”

“Yes,” he sighs, deflated. “I’m aware.”

A moment passes with no words between them, and then Sigrid eases up somewhat, taking a seat in front of him. Like any good leader, she knows when to deliver a rebuke and when to refrain, and he is sure she can see he’s as angry with himself as she is. It’s why she's a better leader than he was and why he stood aside for her, but he has turned out to be a shit deputy just as much as he was probably a shit party leader. A shit politician overall, he supposes.

“Klaver really gave it to you, huh?” she muses dryly after a moment.

Having zoned out, he breaks into a cold sweat at the unwitting double entendre, terrified that somehow their secret has been discovered.

“I’m sorry?”

“In the debate! Jesus, Rob, what’s wrong with you? He rammed a rod up D66’s ass.”

Well, he thinks. In a way, yes.

“He was grandstanding. He’s just trying to win points with the voters that defected from his party to ours,” he attempts to console both of them. “And he’s probably still angry GreenLeft was shut out of the formation.”

Sigrid rises to stand with a huff as if she’s never heard anything so ridiculous. 

“Well, call him off. Rein him in somehow. He’s hurting D66’s image, and we don’t deserve to be targeted any more than CDA or VVD do. We tried to help him by bringing him into government, but he’s the one who didn’t want to help himself.”

The thought of trying to call him off is preposterous. He knows the man better than any other MP here, and Jesse Klaver only answers to one authority: Jesse Klaver.

He contemplates telling her that but settles on only: “And how do you propose I do that?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t you two supposed to be in love or something?” She heads for the door with a dark laugh. “Use that famous Rob Jetten sex appeal.”

That’s rather casual objectification, but he doesn’t have the energy to pick that battle today and watches her go without a word. Once she’s gone, he goes back to massaging his temples, trying to stave off the headache he can feel building. He tries to stop replaying the sequence of events in his mind but can’t manage it, and eventually, his humiliation bleeds over into anger. Jesse had known his one sore point and used it against him in front of everyone, and although he’s had to learn over time not to take things personally in the Kamer, it feels like a betrayal. 

It is personal. He’d intended it to be, gone harder at him to - what? To take out his frustration? 

To punish him?

Rob gets to his feet all at once and leaves his office, heading in the direction of the old Ministry of Colonial Affairs building one block over, where GreenLeft members have their office spaces. He hasn’t planned out at all what he’ll say upon arriving; all he knows is that he needs to do this before he loses his nerve, while the wound is still fresh and stinging.

He navigates through the halls to his office with ease and finds the door open, with Jesse seated behind his large wooden desk, poring over a pile of paperwork. The sun set an hour ago, and the city lights filter in like stars through the tall windows surrounding them. The corner office is lit only by a few desk lamps and a floor lamp near a pair of tufted leather sofas, but Jesse is a bright spot in the dimness, cast in gold and orange tones.

He's removed his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves as usual, unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt so it hangs open to expose his throat. He’s so lost in his work that Rob isn’t sure he even heard him approach, and it allows him a moment to observe him without a word. He has that same disarming, boyish look that always gets him, curls falling in his face, but he refuses to let himself be disarmed by him now.

He has his marching orders from Sigrid. They’re the only reason he’s here. 

But he’s never been good at lying, least of all to himself.

Finally, he looks up from his writing to find him standing in the doorway, and of course, he has the gall to seem irritated by his appearance. It makes his temper rise to impossible heights.

“We need to talk,” Rob states, his tone leaving no room for any further debate today.

At that, Jesse finally does him the courtesy of setting down his pen.

“About?” he presses. Rob doesn’t dignify that with a response; it doesn’t require one, and so finally, he lets out a breath, motioning for him to step inside. Jesse picks up his pen again and avoids his eyes. “Fine. Talk.”

He enters and closes the door behind him, folding his arms. 

“Why did you go after D66 like that today?”

Why did you go after me like that?

Jesse doesn’t respond, just continues staring at him without a word. Rob breathes a frustrated breath and takes another few steps inside until he’s looming over his desk.

“Are you still mad you were shut out of coalition talks? You know that was VVD and CDA, not us. If Sigrid had it her way, it would be GreenLeft and Labour with us-”

This time, he sets down his pen with a slam, incensed by that.

“D66 won more seats in the election than almost any other party this year. You can’t pretend you don’t have more pull now than ever before. You have the opportunity to make real change and yet again, D66 is too spineless to do it. You were the ones who decided to negotiate with Christian Union again and leave us behind-”

“To prevent new elections being called! We don’t win in that scenario.” He rests his hands on the desk and leans toward him, any affection or longing checked at the door. “You had the chance to be in government, and every time, you walk away. You can’t blame us for GreenLeft getting shut out; you wouldn’t compromise at all on-”

Jesse rises too, then, his chair scooting across the floor with a shrill creak. “Unlike you, I have principles I won’t compromise.”

“Then you’ll live and die in opposition and spend the rest of your career doing what you did today. What purpose does that serve? Messaging to voters, maybe swaying a few to your side? GreenLeft could have a seat at the table, a-a say in cabinet’s policies-”

“Not if it means selling my soul like you’ve sold yours,” Jesse shoots back, leaning toward him. If Rob weren’t so furious, he might tense up at the proximity, but he’s too full to the brim with indignation to feel much else. “I know how much you say you care about the environment, but how much of that is genuine when you won’t stand up for what you know is right?”

Has he become a sellout? He was young, once, with all sorts of grand ideals about saving the planet. Jesse still has those ideals, though the world batters his beliefs and the public pans him as a fantasist. He has to admire his determination in the face of what has rarely been anything other than defeat.

“That isn’t fair and you know it,” he snaps. “What do you want me to do? Attack my own party? And, again, I suggest you take all this up with Sigrid, not me, because I’m not party leader anymore.”

He’s close. So close he could kiss him if he wanted, and he does, more than anything. Jesse is a sight to behold when truly angry, one Rob doesn’t see often, his eyes dark and glowing like embers in the dimness, brows pulled together and the cords in his neck jutting out. He could lose himself in looking at him, but he refuses to let Jesse have that sort of power over him now, even though his words cut deeper than he wants to admit.

Jesse draws back, folding his arms. “You could’ve been party leader. You chose to step aside. Why?”

Rob pulls away as if burned by the question, hesitating a few seconds too long to sound convincing. “Sigrid was… the better choice.”

“I know you don’t believe that.”

“I do, actually,” he insists after clearing his throat. 

He can feel the tension simmering down between them and rounds the desk to stand directly in front of him. It feels natural to be there; easy, even. It feels like he’ll always return to him one way or another.

“Look, I didn’t come here to fight," he tells him softly, voice low and urging. "I just came to ask if you would tone down the rhetoric against D66.”

“Did Sigrid put you up to this?” Rob remains mum on that, and it draws a smile out of Jesse, who leans sideways against his desk. “No promises. I’ll probably blast you on Twitter later too. Maybe post the video. You know, win back some of my voters who’ve been led astray by D66’s empty promises.”

Rob rolls his eyes, but feigning nonchalance is increasingly difficult with every second he is close to him. He is barely aware of his own body because he’s so fixated on his: every twinge of every muscle, every inhalation and exhalation, the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he swallows. He tries not to give himself away, but his fidgeting and the way his eyes keep involuntarily glancing down at his lips are not doing him any favors.

“Of course,” he tries to sound exasperated rather than just breathless. “Everything you do is a political calculation.”

“I’m not sure if you’re aware, Mr. Jetten,” Jesse leans in as if telling him a secret, “but we are…  politicians.”

Mr. Jetten. That gets to him in a way no other pet name or nickname ever has, especially coming from him. He could make a move now, but if Jesse is calculating his every move, then he supposes so too must he. He wants to catch him off guard, on the defensive. Bring his walls down. Bring him to heel. He has to assert some sort of power here, or he’ll lose himself completely, and that he won’t allow.

After all, he came here for a reason.

He moves in a bit closer and raises his chin defiantly. “So what is it you want me to do? Get on my knees and beg for forgiveness for D66’s sins?”

“I’m not opposed to you getting on your knees,” Jesse tells him, so casually he might as well be talking about the weather, “but not to beg for forgiveness.”

Another step. Another inch closer. This room feels far too small to contain everything he’s feeling. The air feels electrified in the way it is just before lightning strikes.

Goddammit. He doesn’t know how he can just come out and say things like that.

“Fine,” he grinds out, kissing him.

Rob has no idea if the door is locked; he doesn’t recall locking it, but he doesn’t pull away to do so, driven by some sick, exhibitionistic urge to allow them to be discovered. He grabs hold of his collar and tugs him closer, taking control of the kiss and deepening it. It isn’t slow or gentle; it’s more of a battle of wills than a kiss at all, both of them grappling to obtain the upper hand. Every second is perilous. Every second could be the end of them.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need much time.

Something else rises up inside him and takes over, right then, and he feels himself pushing Jesse down into his desk chair, where he lands with a surprised huff, licking his lips as if amused. Rob can feel that amusement waver, however, as he unzips his trousers and peels back his boxers, drawing out his cock and taking it in hand, never breaking his gaze as he does. He's hard already, throbbing in his palm when he wraps his hand around him. He can see his tip glistening with precome, undeniable evidence of how badly he wants him. It's the first time he's really taken time to look at him like this, and he's bigger than he'd expected, just thick enough around to be perfect. He shifts on his knees, recalling the way he'd ached for days after fucking him. Wanting that ache again. Over and over and over.

He wonders if he gets off on this: humiliating him during the debate and then seeing him on his knees. Outwardly, Rob has always been dominant, confident, bulletproof; he’s had to be. He’ll never admit that this makes him almost dizzy with want, but judging by the look in his eyes, he thinks Jesse already knows.

Rob can feel the way his body responds to his touch, the way his breath hitches when he runs one teasing hand up and down the length of his thigh. He can feel the moan he stifles when he mouths his tip, tasting sweat and salt; the shivers he fights when he parts his lips to take more of him in; the way he resists the urge to grab his hair before resorting to clutching the arms of his chair instead.

Although he may be on his knees, he is well aware he’s the one with the upper hand now, and he experiments with different amounts of pressure and movements, playing him like an instrument. He takes him deeper and deeper until he feels him nearly at his throat, and Jesse seems to try to shift back somewhat, as if afraid it'll be too much and he'll hurt him. His attentiveness, even in this situation, dims his anger somewhat, but not enough to make him deviate from his course of action.

He’s never been one to be noncommittal about a blowjob, and when he begins to use his hands too, twisting and joining his tongue as he bobs up and down, he is successful in drawing the first gasp out of Jesse, which he bites back as quickly as he let slip. He wonders what he would sound like if he didn’t have to be quiet, and his cock twitches in his trousers at the thought.

Another time. Focus.

Abruptly, he stands, ripping himself away and dabbing at his lips with the handkerchief he keeps in his pocket. Jesse’s eyes are glazed over with desire, but confusion mixes in as soon as he feels him stop, and he stares up at him with a look not unlike heartbreak. He is breathing hard, legs splayed, appearing almost as if he’d beg for more if they could make noise. He looks like some sort of pornographic mirage, something he'd only ever dare to imagine in his wildest dreams. It takes every bit of willpower in Rob’s body to step back. 

God, he wants to devour him. He wants to suck him off until he moans, drive him mad, make him beg. It would be so easy.

Later. There is time for that later.

“Don’t embarrass me in front of everyone like that again. Or D66,” he orders. The firmness of his voice surprises both of them. “Then maybe next time, I’ll be a little kinder.”

He knows the words will ring in his ears for hours, perhaps even days, and so he leaves him with that.

He doesn’t look back.

-

Rob waits up until midnight to see if the GreenLeft social media accounts will post the video of the debate, anticipating the inevitable flood of online hatred coming his way, but when the hour comes and goes and nothing has appeared, he pulls out his phone. He knows something is amiss; Jesse is far too savvy to pass up an opportunity like that.

You didn’t post the video, he types, then hits send.

The speed with which he replies shocks him. No.

Why not? he asks although he has a sneaking suspicion he already knows.

Turns out you have remarkable powers of persuasion.

He can’t deny the feeling of satisfaction that wells up inside him at that. He had accomplished what he had set out to do, yet somehow, the sense of accomplishment is hollow. The longing is still there in its place, like a black hole, eating at him from the inside.

We still need to talk, he types, because it’s true. They do. If they are embarking on this thing together, they need ground rules, and they need guardrails to stop this speeding car from flying over the edge.

Yes, I think so too.

Afraid somehow that he’s put him off, he rushes to clarify. I don’t want to stop.

A minute passes. Then two. Finally, his phone buzzes again on his nightstand, displaying three little words with the power to upend their universe:

I don’t either.

Chapter Text

As luck would have it, before they can talk, Rob finds himself whisked away on a dreadful teambuilding retreat at an estate in Hilversum with Sigrid, Rutte, and several representatives from their would-be coalition partners. Sigrid is hopeful something about the change of scenery and escape from the city will lead to a breakthrough in negotiations. 

He is less optimistic but goes along without protest. In all honesty, he feels like he could use an escape from the city for reasons of his own. 

The wooded estate is gorgeous, built in the style of an English country home with red brick, large bay windows, and stately chimneys rising over the top of the roof. He’s been here before for cabinet talks, but never in the fall, and he must admit it looks like something out of a painting, the forest around them a tapestry of reds, golds, and oranges. It loses its luster, however, as soon as talks begin, and he’s confronted by the reality of the people he’s there with: the Christian Democrats, Christian Union, and Mark Rutte. 

It’s not the most lively bunch. In fact, it’s quite a miserable bunch, and soon enough, he’s miserable too.

Negotiations are set to last three days, but by the second, Rob has already gone a bit stir crazy. Sensing this, Sigrid insists on a walk before dinner that evening, and the two of them set off down a trail through the woods, admiring the scenery around them. For a while, the only sound to be heard is the sound of leaves crunching beneath their boots, and then, at last, Sigrid gazes over at him.

“Are you all right?” she asks without preamble, eyeing him closely.

He zips his coat and tucks his hands into his pockets. “Wonderful. There’s nothing I love more than being trapped in the middle of nowhere with two parties that don’t believe I have the right to exist.”

“I know. I know it must be hard for you,” Sigrid sighs in frustration as she slips on her gloves. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go either, but we’re here now. We have to make the best of it.”

Rob doesn’t answer. He only continues strolling along at her side and shivers when a cold wind whips through, rustling the trees above them. He wishes Jesse were here more than anything - not only because it would mean seeing him, but because it would mean there would still be a chance of their parties working together. Instead, he’s found himself forced to spend hours on end sitting across from people he has to pretend he doesn’t hate and who have to pretend they don’t hate him simply because they’ve reconciled themselves to this horrible misalliance.

The Christian parties have always opposed same-sex marriage, even if they’re less vocal about it now. Opposed his entire existence, really. He’s been able to remove his personal feelings from the situation thus far, but the longer they’re here, the more it weighs on him, and the more he notices the subtle slights, like how they avoid him outside of negotiations and don’t attempt to make small talk over lunch. He pretends not to notice the barely-concealed scorn on some of their faces.

He sees it and rises above. He has no other choice. 

Rob loses himself in his thoughts, and Sigrid, always one to be irritatingly observant, notices.

“You’ve been distracted lately. What’s going on?”

“Have I?” he wonders aloud, his mind still roaming elsewhere. He must not be as discreet with his daydreaming as he thinks.

“Yes. Is everything all right at home? How’s your partner?”

“He’s fine. He works abroad, and I’m always busy, so we don’t see each other as much as we’d like.”

Sigrid continues tramping through the woods, and he has to pick up his pace to keep up with her. “That must be difficult.”

“Not really,” he mutters, picturing another face that doesn’t belong to his partner: thick curls and teasing eyes and knowing half-smirks. He shakes his head in an attempt to cast away the image, but it remains. “I mean, uh, you know. We make it work.”

Dispensing with pleasantries, Sigrid tells him, “Whatever it is distracting you, you need to do something about it. I need your head in the game for the formation, and I can’t have you performing like you did in that debate with Klaver. We have to cement our place as a major party, earn their respect. If things like that keep happening, we never will.”

She isn’t chastising him, simply telling him how it is, and he appreciates her frankness. It keeps him centered. Most of the time, it’s exactly what he needs to hear.

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Good.” Sigrid pauses and takes a deep breath of the autumn air into her lungs. “At least Klaver didn’t take to social media with that video. And he hasn’t gone at us since. How did you manage that?”

He finds himself grinning before he can bite it back but keeps walking, hoping she’ll assume the flush on his cheeks is from the cold.

“I have remarkable powers of persuasion, I suppose.”

-

Dinner is an unpleasant affair, and the talks that follow even more so, but he powers through them with newfound energy and focus for Sigrid’s sake. They conclude around midnight, having achieved nothing of note, and he retires to his room on the second floor with a heavy head. The furnishings remind him of his grandmother’s house, all dark wood, dusty antique furniture, and one too many grandfather clocks. He kicks off his shoes and flops down on the ornate four-poster bed, which protests with a creak. For a while, all he does is stare blankly at the ceiling.

It all seems pointless, and perhaps it is. They’re going in circles, disagreeing on the same things, arriving at the same impasses over and over. The new setting and isolation from the outside world haven’t seemed to make much of a difference. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? If so, then they must all be insane, but maybe someone has to be at least partially insane to seek this kind of office in the first place, he thinks.

He pulls out his phone to numb his brain, scrolling through social media for a while. Then, he navigates to his messages, returning a few he’d missed throughout the day before settling his finger over Jesse’s name, where it appears lower in the list.

His distraction. That’s what Jesse is. Sigrid needs him focused and sharp, and Jesse knocks him off balance. If he knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t torment himself like this, but he opens their conversation anyway, rereading his last text.

I don’t either. 

They are dangerous words, full of forbidden promise. They make his stomach tie itself into a knot. He taps into his contact and stares at his phone number until the digits are seared into his mind. If he knew what was good for him, he would delete that number and never look back.

But he doesn’t - he never has - so he presses down to dial it instead.

The moment it begins to ring, Rob panics. He should know better than to call without asking first to see where he is. Probably he’s at home with his family. His wife. 

He must not be, thankfully, because he answers after the second ring.

“Hello there.”

The sound of his voice - cavalier and smooth, as if this is any routine phone call - makes his throat tighten. Maybe this was a mistake, doing this here with Sigrid in the next room and Rutte in the other, and God knows who else around them. They do need to talk, though, and perhaps that is better done over the phone because they can’t seem to keep their hands off one another long enough to do it in person.

“Hello.” There’s a pause, then he asks, “Where are you?”

“The office. Why?”

“I…” he drifts off, unable to find the words for a moment. “I, uh, I wasn’t sure if you were at home.”

Another silence. Jesse must pick up on his meaning but doesn’t acknowledge it aloud; those things are better left unsaid for the time being. 

“No, while you’ve been away on your little holiday, the rest of us in the Kamer are still doing actual work.”

“You say that like we aren’t here deciding the future of the country.”

“Mm,” Jesse does a poor job of trying to sound disinterested. “Yes, how is that going, by the way?”

“Are you fishing for information?”

“Unashamedly so. Has Rutte made you all hold hands and sing Kumbaya around a campfire yet?”

“Even if he did, I don’t think it would help. We’re deadlocked. We haven’t made a single bit of progress since we’ve been here. If we can’t come to an agreement, I have no idea what we’ll do.”

“Good company at least?” the other man teases, knowing the answer already.

“I can think of several things that are more pleasant than being trapped in the woods with the Christian Democrats and Christian Union. Jamming toothpicks into my eyes, for one. It’s like a nightmarish sleepaway camp.” Jesse’s laughter floats through the other end of the line like velvet against his ears. He licks his lips, giving it a beat and savoring the sound, before speaking again. “Sigrid noticed I’ve been distracted lately.”

“Ah. She’s smart, that one.”

He grabs another pillow and pushes it behind him to prop up his head. “That’s why I called. So we can talk, finally.”

“About?”

He feels pleasantly unsettled, his body at attention like he’s developed some sort of Pavlovian response to the mere sound of his voice. What does he really want to talk about? He wants to talk about how he wishes he were here and what he would do to him if he were, but he casts aside those thoughts in favor of more productive ones.

He clears his throat in an attempt to steady his voice. “We need to set ground rules. For… whatever this is that we’re doing.”

“All right. You first.”

“Well, number one: we can’t tell anyone,” he asserts.

“That’ll be easy. The whole Kamer and the Internet already think we’re having an affair. There’s no one left to tell.”

“I know. But we can’t be too obvious.”

“More obvious than we already are?”

Rob ignores that pointedly. “Second, we can’t use any information we learn throughout the course of this against each other. No doing what you did in the debate, either. We leave our work out of it.”

“I’m sorry for that. What I said in the debate. It was uncalled for.” A moment passes in silence as they ruminate on the apology, then Jesse shifts his focus back to the topic at hand. “So, confidentiality. Separation of church and state. Is there a number three?”

“No feelings. This can never become anything real. This is just….”

Rob is rarely at a loss for words, but he realizes he doesn’t know what to call it. Fun. A mistake. 

A disaster waiting to happen.

“Fun,” is what he ultimately chooses, but that doesn’t feel like it encapsulates what they are even remotely, and the word falls flat.

There is a pause on the other end of the line, long enough to indicate some degree of hesitation. 

Then, Jesse says, “All right. Now have we concluded with the business of the day?”

He finds his mind wandering abruptly to his partner, to the lives they lead when they aren’t together. They’ve worked too hard to get to where they are now to throw it all away, and Jesse has ambitions to be prime minister one day. They would be fools to risk everything for something they don’t even have a name for, but the thought of stopping now that they’ve begun is intolerable. It’s exactly what he was afraid of when they started; he’d known somehow, in an innate, bone-deep way, that this is how it would be.

“You’re married,” he remarks without thinking, as though acknowledging the guilt out loud will somehow ease the burden of it.

“Yes,” Jesse concedes sarcastically. “And after my wife, would you like to discuss your partner?”

“Point taken.” He allows them to lapse into quiet again, and even though they aren’t speaking, there’s a certain undeniable comfort in knowing Jesse is on the other end of the line so many miles away, as consumed by thoughts of him as he is. Before he can help it, his curiosity gets the better of him. “Have you ever been with a man? Before me, I mean.”

“A number of times, in university. Doesn’t everyone have that phase?”

“Well - I mean, no.” He can’t help but chuckle at that. “A high number of times or a low number of times?”

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Why wasn’t I one of them?” he inquires, voice heavy with meaning.

They had known each other back then, both chairmen of their respective parties’ youth wings. They were never close but friendly whenever they’d cross paths at conferences and other functions. All his life, Rob has always sorted people into subconscious categories: friend or foe, straight or not. For years, Jesse has been a firm occupant of the “if-I-were-single-and-he-were-not-straight” category, and he’s always found himself flirting with him a bit shamelessly since he joined him in the Kamer four years ago. It was innocuous fun with the knowledge that it would never lead anywhere until somehow it led them here.

Those days feel so long ago. They are both very different people than they were. Still, he wonders what could have been.

Jesse’s voice sounds hoarse with want. Rob can feel his cool slipping, bit by bit, like a spool of thread he is unraveling.

“One of what?”

“One of the guys you slept with in university.”

He sounds shaken by the thought. “We never happened to be in the right place at the right time, I suppose.”

“That’s a pity. Things could’ve been very different now,” he teases as he reaches down to undo his belt and loosen his tie, removing his armor from the day. “But I probably would’ve turned you down anyway.”

Jesse makes a sound of disbelief. “Excuse me, why?” 

“You used to have that long hair. Dreadfully long, and you never styled it. It didn’t look good.”

“That is - you are-” Jesse sounds genuinely offended. “You are rude. I thought it looked good at the time. In retrospect, it was questionable.”

“It’s nice now,” he murmurs, his voice deep and silken. Pulling that thread slowly. Pulling more and more. At this rate, they’ll both be each other’s undoing. “I like your curls. I’d like-”

He stops himself before he ventures into this territory, unsure if it is what Jesse wants tonight, and he’s pleasantly surprised when he prods him to continue. 

“What would you like?”

“To bury my hands in them and fuck your mouth,” he breathes, heat flooding to his face, then flooding lower still. “That’s what I’d like.”

Jesse pretends to be taken aback, but the rattle of desire in his breathing gives him away. “My, you’re forward.”

His tongue is loosened, the words flowing freely and without shame or hesitation. He feels drunk, though he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol all day. He wants to venture further tonight, test the boundaries of whatever this is and see just how far he can push. The image of that - of grabbing his head, of burying himself inside his mouth as deep as he could go - makes him as hard as a rock.

“Look, I’ve been trapped in the woods with Mark Rutte and a gaggle of Christians for days. There are no conjugal visits here. Can you blame me for feeling frustrated?”

“You know, I have to say, dirty talk really gets me going whenever Mark Rutte is mentioned,” Jesse quips, and Rob laughs.

“Sorry. But I-” He exhales sharply, reaching down to unzip his fly, voice easing into something more tender. “I wish you were here. That’s all.”

There is a lengthy moment of silence, longer than any of the ones preceding it. Rob worries for a moment that was too much, too tender, and that he’s spooked him. Thankfully, Jesse remains his typical unflappable self.

“I’ll let you,” he murmurs. His voice is thick like honey, dripping with longing through the phone. “When you’re back. Fuck my mouth.”

“I’ll go easy on you,” Rob promises with a wicked grin, drawing out his cock and taking himself in hand with a gasp. “Well, maybe not that easy. What else will you do when I’m back?”

Jesse hesitates as if to think, then begins in a low, conversational tone that is far too casual for the words he is saying. His breathing catches now and again as he speaks, and Rob doesn’t have to ask to know he’s touching himself too, building towards his peak as he is. He’d give just about anything to see him now. Touch him. Taste him. The knowledge that there is nothing he can do about the distance between them drives him mad; all at once, he wants to break free of this stuffy place, drive all night to reach him. Run to him. Already he hates being away from him for long, even though they’ve only just begun.

He gives himself a firm pump and gnaws on his lower lip to keep quiet, breathing growing increasingly ragged. Normally touching himself like this feels somewhat mechanical, too habitual to really be pleasurable, but with him, it’s like he’s doing it for the first time all over again, rediscovering nerve endings he hadn’t known were there. He closes his eyes, remembering the feeling of his cock inside him, the way this body had stretched and taken him inside effortlessly, and he squirms where he lays. He feels himself clench around nothing, body yearning to be filled.

“I’ll have you up there in front of everyone. At the rostrum, during debate. I’ll bend you over and fuck you and make you moan in front of all of them. And they’ll know, every single one of them, that you’re mine. They’ll watch you. Watch us.” God. God, the image is too much. It’s mortifying, and yet that makes the thought even more appealing. He picks up the pace of his strokes, feeling his climax build as he lets him talk him through it. “I won’t stop. Not until you’re begging. Not until you can’t walk straight the next day. That’s what I would do.”

He’s always known Jesse had a way with words; one has to in their line of work. He had no idea he could use them like this. It doesn’t take him long at all to finish with that image in his head, coming so hard that it takes everything in him not to moan loud enough for the entire estate to hear and spilling hot into his hand. He can hear Jesse stifling his own cry of pleasure a few moments later, though it’s soft and barely audible.

He wishes they didn’t have to do that: stifle the sounds they make. He looks forward to the day he can have him in his bed again, where they won’t need to hold anything back.

“God,” Rob chokes out a laugh as his orgasm dissipates, and he gives in to the inevitable creep of sobriety. He reaches over to the nightstand, grabbing tissues to clean himself. “Why don’t you propose that at the next meeting to set the agenda? I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

Jesse hums, sounding sleepy and sated. “When are you back?”

“Next week.” His breathing returns to its normal pace, and he eases back into the feather pillows, closing his eyes. The exhaustion of the day has begun to wash over him too, but he clings to each word that comes through the phone, hanging on every syllable. “I’ll find time, put a block on my schedule.”

It sounds ludicrous, having to pencil an illicit affair into his calendar, but it’s necessary; they both know that. They have so little free time when the Kamer is in session during the week. Still, he’ll find a few precious moments one way or another.

“To fuck my mouth, you mean?” Jesse clarifies mock-seriously.

Rob snorts. “Would it help if I send a calendar invite?”

“Yes. You know, just so I don’t get it confused with another meeting.”

“Of course.”

“Well. Until next week then, Mr. Jetten.”

“Until next week, Mr. Klaver.”

The line goes dead before he can say another word. Until next week. Next week might as well be centuries away.

He’s going to crawl out of his skin waiting.

Chapter Text

Jesse is the first person he sees when he steps inside the Kamer the following Tuesday.

He doesn’t set out to look for him at first, not really, but his eyes find him automatically like heat-seeking missiles. The chatter of their colleagues fades at the drop of a hat when he lays eyes on him, becoming little more than a muffled drone in the background. He is clad in a checkered grey suit and black tie, standing near his seat and chatting with another member of GreenLeft. They’re laughing about something, and he has one hand tucked in his pocket, as effortlessly confident in himself as anyone he’s ever seen.

He knew he would be here, of course, but he comes to a stop in the aisle near the top row like a deer in headlights before another MP brushes past him to get to his seat and gives him a strange look.

Sigrid’s words echo in his ears. Whatever it is distracting you, you need to do something about it.

Oh, yes. He intends to.  

Rob makes his way over to his seat and watches as the last few stragglers mill around the front of the chamber. Just as the speaker calls them to order, he is startled by a familiar voice in the aisle beside him.

“Welcome back,” Jesse greets, giving him the look he knows too well, which now seems like it has a thousand more hidden meanings than it did before. He had made his way over without him noticing, and by some miracle, Rob is able to school his features into a look of nonchalance. “Still on for our five o’clock?”

They both know what their five o’clock is, though it would sound perfectly innocent to anyone else. It makes his pulse quicken hearing it mentioned aloud. They’re fools to tempt fate like this, he thinks. This is a dangerous game.

His heart is lodged so firmly in his throat that all he can do is nod. He doesn’t trust his voice to be steady.

Jesse disappears back to his seat without another word as question time commences and the noise in the chamber dies down. They are set to ask questions of the State Secretary for Justice and Security about the influx of asylum seekers into the Netherlands, and it’s an interesting topic, one he cares about deeply, but it takes most of his brainpower to fight the urge not to glance over at Jesse as the minutes drag on interminably. Five o’clock. Only three hours. He can wait.

Patience is a virtue, but then again, he isn’t virtuous.

Geert Wilders stands and approaches the microphone in the front, espousing some xenophobic nonsense about migrants that makes half the Kamer cringe, and it’s then that he notices his phone light up before him on the table with Jesse’s name. He tries to make himself recall Sigrid’s words again, and when that fails, he tries to picture her upbraiding him for being distracted. When that fails, too, he finally gives in and unlocks it.

Does Wilders remind you of a deranged seagull? It’s something about the eyebrows and hair.

He stifles a laugh and taps out a reply. I’ve always thought strung-out Oompa Loompa, but I see it.

Rob assumes that will be the end of it, but then another message appears. 

I miss sitting next to you.

That is too gentle, too close to something they’ve expressly forbidden themselves. With that in mind, he parries.

It’s better that they separated us. If we were still there, we’d never get anything done.

I don’t get much done as it is.

He swallows as heat rises to his cheeks. Me either. It’s a problem.

Is it?

Yes.

He locks his phone with a sort of finality, vowing to himself he’ll ignore it if he texts again, but, as usual, his willpower is just a tad weaker than he would like to believe.

I miss your glasses, too.

Rob glances around at the members seated nearby. None of them appear to be paying any attention to him, focused instead on the front of the room as the secretary tries to answer Wilders’ question in the most diplomatic way possible. He reaches down to respond, oddly touched by that.

Really? I hated them. I got laser eye surgery.

I know. But they looked good on you.

He rolls his eyes, shaking his head, but he can only pretend to be annoyed, in all honesty.

Stop texting me.

Another infuriating buzz.

All right. See you at five. My office or yours?

Mine. He wants him on his territory this time.

Rob sets his phone down, and it doesn’t buzz again, their conversation closed and the logistics of their meeting set. He catches Sigrid watching him with a frown as she makes her way down the aisle to her seat in the front. It startles him back to himself, and he opens up his leather padfolio, pretending to jot down something in his notes and turning his eyes to the front of the room.

-

He is back in his office by quarter till five, and it’s there that Rob waits at the large table in the middle of the room, heart in his stomach, one knee bobbing anxiously. The anticipation has built to such an unbearable level since last week that it feels as if having him will be relief rather than satisfaction. Yet he’s tense, too, because Jesse has a way of making him nervous that not many other people do. It’s as if he sees right through him sometimes, reading him under ultraviolet light. Picking out the pieces of himself that he shields from the world otherwise and putting them uncomfortably on display.

It would be easier if he hated him for that, but he never could. Not even if he wanted to.

There is a knock outside his office right then, and he answers it to find Jesse on the other side, the wolf at his door.

“Hello,” he says, as casually as he can manage, but it’s a thin facade. As if he hasn’t been envisioning this exact moment for days. “Right on time. I shouldn’t have expected any less.”

“Of course,” Jesse says by way of a response and saunters in without hesitation, leaning against the side of the table like the office belongs to him. “How was Hilversum?”

“Unproductive,” Rob admits. “But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?”

“Well, we’re not really here to talk at all, are we?”

He shakes his head and closes the door, locking it behind them. With that, they’re alone.

Rob finds, all at once, that he’s unsure how to proceed, even though any sane person would make the most of every second. That is the danger of picturing a scenario so many times: he’s mapped out so many possibilities over the last few days that he finds himself unsure which one to take in the moment. His tie feels too tight. So does his belt, his shirt. His trousers, between his legs. He is blushing like a schoolboy, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

Sensing his indecision, Jesse makes his way over to him where he stands by the door, head angled down slightly and eyes gazing up as if amused.

“Your calendar invitation said half an hour,” he observes and takes a look at his watch. “So, if we’re going to make the most of our time, I suggest-”

Rob kisses the words out of his mouth. “You talk too much.”

Never one to be a shrinking violet, Jesse returns the kiss with twice the power, backing him up against the office door and letting Rob anchor one hand in his hair with the other on his hip. It is forceful but not rushed, and it feels entirely different from the times he has kissed him before. They aren’t drunk. They have time enough to savor this properly. Rob feels so overwhelmingly present in this moment that it hurts.

“Give me something else to do with my mouth, then,” Jesse dares.

Need pulses through him like an electric jolt. He can feel his heartbeat in his cock. It’s unfair, the way he talks, the way he kisses. Smiles. The way he is. Horrifically unfair.

The instinct to undress him as fast as he possibly can is difficult to resist, but somehow he manages, walking him leisurely over to the leather sofa instead and climbing atop him. Rob straddles him with ease, grinding down and cupping the erection he can feel growing between his legs. Jesse hisses but surprisingly doesn’t attempt to take control; he just leans back, an unspoken sign that he can do whatever he pleases.

Rob has to remind himself to breathe. Okay. This is new. 

He lets himself explore his body for the first time, which he realizes up until now, he hasn’t had much chance to do. He palms his chest, feeling the firmness of his muscles there, and kisses the hollow of his throat, taking care not to leave any marks behind. He discovers a spot behind his ear that makes him go boneless and presses his lips against that, too, committing it to memory. He’s sure that will be useful later. He charts him like an undiscovered land, enraptured by a topography all his own.

Rob doesn’t move to undress him, not yet. He gets a twisted sort of pleasure in grinding against Jesse to tease him with the barrier of clothing still there, thwarting them. He palms him through the fabric of his trousers, and it makes him buck his hips upward, seeking more friction, but he doesn’t oblige.

Him. Jesse. This is him. The thought is like a mantra in his head. He’s wanted this for so long, longer than he thinks he even realized. It was always there, latent, waiting to surface.

“You’re a problem,” Rob pants as he works his fingers gingerly through his shirt buttons, cherishing the slide and slip of the pearlescent shell beneath his fingertips. “You distract me. In the chamber. All the time, really.”

“Could it be that’s part of my evil plan? Sabotage D66 from the inside by seducing you?”

Rob pauses to give him a skeptical look. “You’re not that diabolical.”

“Are you sure?” Jesse presses and Rob realizes he doesn’t know the answer to that.

“Did you want this,” Rob asks with his breath hot like steam against his neck, “before we started?”

“Yes.”

No hesitation. Not even a second’s worth.

“How long?” he prods, a furious need to know arising in him out of nowhere.

“I don’t know. Always, I think.” Jesse pulls back for a moment, eyes hazy, unfocused, and shot through with desire. His suit was perfectly pleated and starched when he stepped inside here, and now he’s a rumpled mess, but it suits him better, he thinks. “You?”

Rob doesn’t answer. He can’t find the words. He just kisses him again, twice as hard this time, and figures that will serve.

Jesse maneuvers out from underneath him eventually, urging him back into a sitting position on the sofa instead, and when he sinks to his knees in front of him, he all but stops breathing. The only thing he can do is stare at him with reverence, although Jesse is the one on his knees, as if ready to worship. A wild surge of arousal pounds through him.

Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ.

“I really don’t think we should bring him into this,” Jesse teases, and he realizes he’s said the words out loud. They both laugh. “So, as I recall… you said you wanted to fuck my mouth.”

It takes him a moment to regain the ability to speak after the mental image that conjures up.

“Let’s start small, work our way up to that.”

A buzz on the table beside them pulls Rob back to earth. His phone. Normally, he would ignore it, but he’s always on call during the week, dashing from meeting to meeting, and he knows it might be urgent. He paws at the wooden surface until he locates it and holds it up to his face, finding a text from Sigrid on the lock screen.

I want to debrief with our members before coalition talks in the morning. Sending the conference line now.

Nowhere in the text is there a question or a request for his availability. Sigrid always asks for forgiveness instead of permission, and he usually has no problem with that, but now-

“Shit,” he swears at the unwanted intrusion of the outside world, willing it away. He can’t beg off; that will only provoke her suspicions even more, and he’s second in command anyway. His absence would be noted. “Sigrid wants me on a call.”

Jesse raises an eyebrow. “Now?”

“Yes.” He exhales, sitting up and sending her a quick text back telling her he’ll be on. “Are you free tonight? Maybe I can-”

“Just a call? Not on video?” Jesse asks, ignoring him, and Rob furrows his brow.

“Yeah, why?”

“Then I’d say we still have time.”

He blinks. It takes his short-circuiting brain a moment to process that. Oh. 

Oh.

“You’re not serious,” he scoffs, but one look at his face is all it takes for him to know that he is. Deadly serious. “I can’t… you can’t, while I’m-”

Jesse just stares, completely unperturbed, and tells him: “Dial in. Mute yourself. And sit back.”

His logical brain protests but is promptly beaten into submission by his far less logical one. It’s stupid, letting him listen in on sensitive party business like this. He’ll know things he shouldn’t. Perhaps he would use it against them. But one look down at Jesse where he kneels between his spread legs, massaging his thighs, with those dark eyes of his and his curls falling in his face, is all it takes for Rob to relent.

He’s like an incubus, damn him. He could probably get him to say yes to just about anything. He’d sell his soul for another kiss.

Rob dials the number and announces his name as he is patched into the call, hitting the mute button shortly thereafter. There is a lull during which a number of other members announce themselves, and he takes advantage of it to focus his attention elsewhere.

“Have you-” his words are cut off by a gasp when Jesse reaches down, unzipping his pants and urging him to shift upwards so he can peel back his boxers too. His erection springs free once he does, and he finds himself almost embarrassed by how hard he is, flushed and aching. “Ah. Have you done this before?”

Jesse shakes his head. “No, actually.”

He has to squeeze his eyes shut to stop himself from coming untouched at the thought. Still, he’s glad he asked.

“Okay. I’ll… go easy.”

“Not too easy,” Jesse corrects him, echoing his words from their phone call in Hilversum.

Rob tries to laugh but can’t find the oxygen to manage it. “No, not too easy.”

His eyes nearly roll back in his head when Jesse leans down, parts his lips, and takes him into his mouth, pressing his tongue against the underside of his tip and swirling it around. There’s not much remarkable about the act itself; he’s had better, more skillful blowjobs, but the knowledge that it’s him is what sends him off the deep end. He lets his head fall back against the sofa and, at the last second, remembers to try to listen to the call as Sigrid begins running through the agenda, but she might as well be speaking Greek. He can’t multitask, not when he has Jesse on his knees in front of him. Trying to focus on anything else would be a crime.

He is at a loss for what to do with his hands. He tucks one behind his head and clenches the other into a fist before finally settling on running it through his curls instead, brushing them back to watch him. Selfishly, he wants to grab his hair, tug him down and fuck into his mouth like he’d fantasized about, but he spares him that for his inexperience. 

One day, maybe.

A few minutes in, and he’s already tantalizingly close and breathing like an animal, but he won’t let Jesse bring him to pieces so fast. It would be a tacit admission of just how far gone he is, how powerful a hold on him he has, and for now, he thinks that is better kept to himself. He focuses instead on stroking his hair, twisting a curl around his finger and watching as his head bobs leisurely up and down. Their eyes meet, and he gives him that look he always does. He winks, too, and it almost sends him sailing right over the edge when-

“Rob? What do you think?”

Someone is saying his name. Sigrid.

Fuck. The call. He’d completely forgotten.

He is in no state to unmute himself, but it isn’t as if he has a choice. So Rob clears his throat, doing his best to steady his voice, and picks up the phone from where it rests beside him on the couch. 

“I’m sorry, I think there was some… interference.” Shit, he sounds out of breath. Jesse, mercifully, has pulled back, looking up at him with a smirk as he struggles to pull himself together. He wonders if he did this on purpose. “What did you say?”

“Do we budge on our stance on nuclear power? VVD and CDA both want eight new stations. I told them our maximum would be two. I’m concerned about the cost, frankly, and I’m not sure there’s a need for it. Either we say two, or we go up to three and then see if they can work with us on more funding for renewables. Personally, I think we stay at two.”

There is nothing he cares less about in the world at present than nuclear power. Jesse is looking up at him with something he interprets as disapproval; he knows GreenLeft’s distaste for nuclear energy well, but that makes no difference here. It’s not as if he’ll be swayed from a long-held policy position by a blowjob.

“Uh, yeah,” he manages to bite out. “Yeah, I agree. I think that sounds good, Sigrid.”

It’s a weak answer, not to mention a cop-out. Typical man, he thinks, piggybacking on a woman’s articulate answer with something miserably inarticulate. If he were in his right mind, he’d have more to say on the topic, but when Jesse leans in again and resumes sucking him, he has to shove his fist into his mouth to keep quiet.

There is a long pause on the line as if they expect him to continue.

“Are you all right, Rob?” someone else on the call asks. “You sound out of breath.”

He can feel Jesse’s lips curl into a grin around him, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t look down. He’ll die. 

“Fine. Just, uh, running to grab dinner.”

The second he is muted again, he glances down at him. He should be angry, but he feels insane laughter bubbling up inside him instead at the ridiculousness of it all.

“You are unbelievable.”

It doesn’t take much longer until he is spilling into his mouth with a choked cry he only remembers to bite back at the last second, fisting his hand in his hair and bucking his hips involuntarily. He warns him in the seconds before, expecting him to pull away, but to his credit, Jesse doesn’t flinch, just continues on until he has swallowed him down and he has gone as limp as a ragdoll on the sofa. If he could come twice in a row, the sight of him when he withdraws - breathless, with wet, swollen lips and that same fucking look in his eyes -  would be enough to do him in.

He knows enough to recognize that this will become a problem, if it isn’t already. It seems doing something about his distraction has only served to make said distraction even worse. Sigrid’s advice had backfired, but to be fair, she probably didn’t envision this being what he needed to do something about.

“You-” Rob starts, then falters. This is crazy. He must be out of his mind. “You’re far too good at that to have never done it before.”

Jesse rises up slightly with a shrug. “I’m good at everything I do.”

Before he can think twice or tune back into the call, Rob finds himself yanking him up and kissing him with abandon, as if trying to absorb every bit of him. He can taste himself on his tongue, and it’s not as if he’s never done that before, but doing it with him is almost dizzyingly erotic. Everything feels like the first time with him. His nerve endings have been turned up to ten. His senses are heightened. Every touch is an overdose.

Even if he could have all of him, he thinks that it still somehow wouldn’t be enough.

He doesn’t waste any time reversing their positions and sinking to his knees with smooth, practiced ease. He’d call it revenge, and revenge is sweet, but the taste of him is sweeter. He has Jesse reduced to a shuddering mess in what must be record time, and although he can feel him getting close, feel him try to resist the pleasure as it builds, he doesn’t ease up. He is merciless, alternating his mouth with deft tugs and masterful twists of his hands.

With his own flesh spent, he can multitask a bit better, and this time, when his name is mentioned on the call, he hears it immediately. However, he waits a moment before pulling away and grabbing his phone, during which he also makes a point of shoving his hand over Jesse’s mouth. He shoots him a disgruntled look from above, but in all honesty, he doesn’t trust him to keep quiet, knowing the things he’s doing to him at the moment.

“Rob?” Sigrid calls his name again, wrangling his brain into the space it needs to occupy for now. “Rob, if you’re talking, we can’t hear you. You’re muted.”

“Sorry,” he apologizes once he unmutes his line, holding Jesse’s gaze with a coy grin. “My mouth was full.”

He is many things, he thinks, but a liar isn’t one of them.

Rob clears his throat and continues, “Anyway, so, right, the carbon emissions tax-”

Things drag on for a while longer. After he’s wrung every last drop out of Jesse, the other man collapses back on the couch, and they stay there together as the call comes to a close, Rob seated with his feet on the floor, and Jesse’s legs swung over his lap. They haven’t had a moment of peace like this since they started, and it feels blessedly normal to sit together without a word, basking in each other’s presence.

He tosses his phone aside once Sigrid adjourns them, and only then does he finally look over at Jesse, who is scrolling on his own phone and appears close to nodding off.

“So,” Jesse pipes up at last. “Rutte is still opposed to abolishing the landlord levy? People accuse me of Disneyland politics while that man lives in Disneyland in his head full time. Does he realize there’s a housing crisis? Has anyone asked him lately?”

So he was listening. He always is.

Rob sighs, idly stroking his leg with one hand. “See, this is why I shouldn’t have had you listen in.”

“Don’t look like that. I understand the rules,” he avers, looking indignant at the suggestion that he doesn’t. He stands and begins to put himself back together, tucking in his shirt and adjusting his tie. “I won’t say anything publicly. I’ll just have a speech ready to go the second this is up for debate and a statement drafted to put out afterward.”

Rob stands as well and grins, feeling wrung out and loose-limbed. The desire, though always present somewhere inside him, has gone quiet behind his eyes, at least for now. If they had time, he’d bathe in the afterglow a while longer, but they don’t, and so he begins to dress as well.

“I think that’s fair.”

Once they’ve restored themselves to some semblance of propriety, Rob looks over at the time and frowns. He wants to draw this moment out, live in it forever, and never return to the real world, but that, and so many other things, they can’t allow themselves. 

“I have to go. I have a meeting at six.”

“So do I. Same time next week?”

He shakes his head; he’ll never make it until then, especially if he has to wait the weekend. He knows, suddenly, what he wants out of Jesse this week, and acts accordingly.

“Too far away. Do you have any time Thursday night?”

“Twice in one week? Don’t spoil me,” he snorts, then walks over to where Rob stands. He hesitates, then reaches out to straighten his tie, a gesture that feels somehow more intimate than a kiss. “Depending on how early my meetings wrap up, yes.”

“Okay,” Rob agrees with a nod. “Alright. It’s a date.”

Jesse scoffs as he makes his way over the door. They don’t end with a kiss or exchange any sweet parting words. They revert to their professional states almost automatically, though Jesse seems to do it with far more ease.

“Don’t call it that.”

-

On Thursday night, he climbs on top of Jesse, pins his hands to the bed, and rides him like a horse he means to break.

This is Rob in his element: bottoming but physically on top, taking control, setting the pace and depth. Fucking him instead of the other way around. He’s been out of his head since they started, and this is a welcome return to form. He barely lets himself look down at him because Jesse peers up at him like he’s a revelation, brown eyes wide and jaw slack, giving up control with a willingness that had surprised him.

Jesse comes inside him with a shout and a litany of unintelligible swears, holding nothing back until he is spent and shaky. He looks thoroughly wrecked when he finally allows himself to look down at him. Destroyed in the most pleasant way.

“Perfect,” Rob pants, leaning down to kiss him.

Now he’s had him.

Chapter Text

So it begins.

They meet once or twice during the week, sometimes at the office and often at his flat in the evenings. Their trysts are never long, no more than one or two hours. Entire nights are luxuries they can't afford. Stolen moments are all they lay claim to, and it's a challenge even to find those sometimes, but they do. Being a politician is already a bit like being a master of deceit, Rob realizes, and it's worrying how naturally it all comes to him: the secrecy, the sneaking around, the lies. It should make him feel dirty, and at times it does, but when they're together, the chaos behind his eyes dies down. The outside world fades to nothing. So does the guilt. 

He wonders how Jesse feels. He has never asked and probably never will, but sometimes he can't help but be curious. 

Living across the country half the week and working in The Hague the other half has always felt to him like leading a double life. Now, it is even more so. For half the week, he lives at home, the faithful lover, keeping a candle lit for his partner and tending to his life there. The other half he is the consummate politician, deputy leader of D66, charismatic and bulletproof and his.

It is untenable; they both know that. This can't go on indefinitely. One day, they'll slip and be discovered, and it will be their undoing. Rob is shocked at how little he cares sometimes. Things like that happen to others who are more foolish, more careless. They aren't.

Coalition talks drag on through the end of October and, by November, seem to have led nowhere. Rob has grown weary of the late nights, the egos and internal squabbles. D66 had bowed to the pressure to negotiate with Christian Union under the threat of new elections, having no other option, and if they can't achieve more of their priorities in this cabinet as a result, they will look weak, both he and Sigrid know that.

They've squandered any advantage they gained in the election, the papers jeer. They're right back where they began, with their old coalition partners they only ever worked with out of necessity. Still, they can't seem to make any headway. It's pathetic.

His frustration with it all bleeds over into his personal life despite his best efforts to silo it off, and he snaps at Jesse one evening in his office as they're dressing. He doesn't remember what for - some ill-timed smartass comment, probably - and regrets it immediately afterward, sinking onto the sofa with a sigh.

He half-expects him to snap back, but Jesse doesn't. Instead, he just walks over and sits beside him with a look he takes to be concern. The lamplight gleams in his eyes, which are as dark as coal, pulling him in. Jesse's tie is crooked, and one button popped off his shirt in the process of disrobing. He has the pleasantly tousled look of someone who has just been turned inside out, and it dampens his anger at once.

"I know we said we'd separate work and play," he begins with his hands clasped in front of him, "but what is it? You've been short with me all day."

Rob hesitates. He shouldn't tell him confidential things like this. It would be insanity to feed the opposition information, but Jesse no longer feels like the opposition. He feels like one of the few genuinely on his side.

"The formation," he says finally, as he runs a hand over his face. He's almost too exhausted to hold up his head, and sex hadn't done much to ease the tension in his muscles like it usually does. "It's a nightmare. I hate working with Christian Union. They're blocking our expansion of euthanasia, even though we made it clear that was non-negotiable if we agreed to work with them again. I don't want to govern with them. They'll just drag us right back to where we were four years ago. More of the same." 

He pauses and glances over at him, a disturbing realization creeping into his brain. 

"Oh, God. I sound like you."

Jesse grins. "I've trained you well. If you don't want to form a coalition with them, then don't form a coalition with them."

He rests his head in his hands. If only it were that simple. 

"We don't have a choice. It's either them or new elections."

"You always have a choice," he pushes back, and Rob raises his head, bewildered by this line of thinking. "If Christian Union is the one thing in the way of a progressive coalition, remove them from the equation."

"Yeah, well. We tried that already."

"D66 tried refusing to work with them. You didn't alienate them completely from the other parties," he corrects him. "Sigrid overplayed her hand, but that was months ago. The landscape has shifted since. It's the longest formation in history now; people are done waiting around for us to form a government. There's outside pressure from them and the media."

Rob isn't sure he has the energy for this tonight but decides to humor him. He's intrigued if nothing else.

"Fine. How do we do that? Remove them from the equation?"

"A leak," is all Jesse says. "Not unlike the one your forgetful friend Segers pulled off last week."

Last week, Christian Union's party leader had conveniently forgotten a copy of a draft coalition agreement on a train. Someone had found it, of course, and just as conveniently sent it to the press. He'd apologized on Twitter for the mistake that Rob isn't convinced was a mistake at all, and no one had bought it. It was all about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

"No one forgets something like that on a train accidentally," Jesse continues. "Who knows why he did it. To satisfy the public appetite or to canvas feedback from his party, maybe. If you want Christian Union out, leak to the press that D66 and Rutte don't want to work with them anymore, that they're too far apart on the issues. Drive a wedge between them."

"But that's not true."

"It will be," Jesse tells him, as tempting as a devil on his shoulder, "if you say it is."

Rob knows what he means in an instant. The power of suggestion is strong. The press would run with it, and the relationship between D66 and Christian Union has always been fragile at best. Rutte would deny it, but then again, no one trusts his word anyway. Over the years, he's come to learn that news stories, even if false, sometimes turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies in the Kamer. Very likely, a leak like that could set off infighting. It might do enough damage for them to pull out.

He has his full attention now, despite his best efforts.

"I wasn't sure before if you were diabolical, but I am now. You are." Jesse shoots him a conspiratorial look but doesn't deny it, and so Rob continues to press, "Using fake news? It's a dirty move. And then what, after that? We'll never get the others to agree to a progressive coalition. Not with both you and Labour, and I know you won't go in without them."

"D66 needs to go to the nuclear option. We'll have new elections anyway if you can't come to an agreement. If Sigrid leaves them with no choice but to work with us or let new elections be called, Rutte could be swayed. He's vulnerable."

He's distracted for a moment by the incisiveness in his voice, the way he gestures with his hands while speaking, the intelligence behind his eyes. He can practically see the wheels turning in his brain, but no, Rob thinks, he must have thought this through already. He's fascinated by the way he looks at the Kamer like a chess match: analyzing his opponents, determining their motivations, anticipating their next move. He loves his mind.

When that word bubbles to the surface, he finds himself launched into a silent panic. He has no idea where it came from but derails that train of thought at once.

"No, his party is polling roughly where they were before the election," he interjects, refocusing on the task at hand. "That won't be enough."

"A motion of no confidence, then. Almost every party would support it. We'd propose it. If D66 threatened to join, it would be enough to oust him, and you know that man will do anything he can to cling to power."

"That still leaves CDA." 

The Christian Democrats. A thorn in their side, if he's being honest. The one party they never seem to be able to get out of government, too large and influential to ignore.

Jesse doesn't hesitate. He's thought this through as well, clearly. 

"Well, CDA would balk at new elections; look at their numbers. They're down as much as you are. And offer to let Hoekstra keep his finance ministry post; we all know he loves it more than his own children." He inclines his head but keeps his eyes on him, rubbing his palms together idly. He looks like a mastermind. An evil one, at that. "They'll think D66 is bluffing when it comes to new elections. So call their bluff."

Rob rises to stand and shakes his head, deciding he's entertained this fantasy long enough. It would be madness to set off a bomb in the formation now when they could be nearing the end. He wants it over and done with, but not if over and done with means his party resigning themselves to the status quo for another year, or two, or three. Not if it means him having to continue to be a hollow shill for policies he doesn't fully believe in, as Jesse would say.

"It's too much of a gamble," he demurs as he crosses the room and leans against the side of his desk, still clad only in his dress shirt and blue slacks. "We'd burn bridges. And it's heavy-handed; that's not Sigrid's style. She won't like it."

"But it achieves the goal you want," Jesse contends, remaining where he is on the sofa. "It forces their hand and gets you your progressive coalition."

He watches him closely, but as usual, the other man has a poker face that might as well be chiseled out of stone. If he has an ulterior motive, he isn't giving it away.

"Why the sudden change of heart? You walked away from talks before and didn't look back."

Jesse sighs and pauses for a moment, then begins.

"GreenLeft lost more voters to your party than any other in the election. They wanted a left-leaning party with a realistic shot of being in government, and they didn't think that was us. We bowed out of talks after the last elections, the voters remembered, and we paid the price this time. It was a mistake I won't make again." 

Once he has finished, Rob realizes why he hesitated so long in the first place: Jesse is always reluctant to admit his mistakes. For him to do so in front of him is more revealing than anything else he's said tonight.

"And, if I'm being honest?" Jesse confesses. "Because of you. We may not always agree on the methods to do it, but I know how much we both care about the environment. It doesn't do us any good to be pitted against each other. I want to govern with you."

I want to govern with you. Fuck. He'd never imagined finding that phrase as sexy as he does.

"If we did this, and I'm not saying we will," Rob starts. He feels shaky and lightheaded. If they've been playing a dangerous game with their affair thus far, then doing this would be like holding hands and sauntering through a minefield, "you and Labour would need to be ready to negotiate. And I don't mean the way you negotiated before. You'll have to make concessions. Big ones. We've conceded things during the last four years we swore we never would."

"I understand," Jesse affirms, though somehow Rob doubts that he truly does.

Another moment of silence settles heavily over the room and fills the space between them like a living, breathing presence. He tries, over and over, to read his expression, but it is as neutral as he's ever seen it, giving away nothing at all. Would he try to manipulate him, use their relationship to his benefit? Rob has known him for more than a decade, and he doesn't think so, but he supposes he can't say for sure; Jesse is as shrewd a political operative as there is.

"What's your angle?" he asks point-blank, not seeing a reason to beat around the bush. If he wants to sniff out a rat, he figures the only surefire way to do it is to set the entire house ablaze and go searching. "New elections would be ideal for GreenLeft. You're up in the polls. D66 is down. You'd fare better if it came to that. This could be suicide for us."

"My angle is a vested interest in a progressive coalition," is Jesse's unhesitating response. "It's right for the country. You know it is. So, I suppose the only question left is-" He pauses and holds out his hands with a shrug, "do you trust me or not?"

-

There is a reception the next evening at a hotel not far from the Binnenhof held by the Farmers' Association. Rob is no stranger to functions like these, put on by lobbying groups to ply lawmakers with free food and drink in exchange for a bit of facetime. He goes to be seen, have a drink or two, and cobble together a meal out of the hors d'oeuvres.

It's a spacious room, all dark cherry wood floors and walls, with tables assembled in the middle full of food, a number of bars scattered throughout, and waitstaff in uniforms milling around with trays. Somewhere nearby, he hears a pianist playing. He orders a drink and fills a tiny plate with appetizers, making small talk with a few other MPs and lobbyists he recognizes for a while until his social stamina begins to deplete. He may be no stranger to things like these, but he's never felt altogether comfortable at them, either. It's all very men-in-suits.

He's never quite gotten used to the fact that he is one of those men in suits.

To his surprise, he comes upon Jesse after a while, idling in the middle of the room with a drink in his hand and looking somewhat out of place. He considers avoiding him but decides that avoiding him in public would be more suspicious than simply talking to him. Everyone thinks they're lovers anyway.

They just don't need to know how right they are.

"You don't usually go to these things," Rob says by way of a greeting as he wanders over, one hand in his pocket.

"No," Jesse replies as he takes a sip of his drink. He doesn't seem surprised to see him, as if he'd already noticed he was here. "After ten years, I've had my fair share."

They stroll across the room at each other's side, assimilating into the crowd.

"Don't the farmers hate you?" Rob asks, and Jesse acknowledges that with a hum.

GreenLeft eternally advocates for compulsory buyouts of farmers to reduce pollution and a whole host of other policies the industry hates. Rob is surprised they invited him at all tonight, but he knows they invite everyone to these things.

"That's why I make a point of showing my face every year. You see that woman over there?" He gestures to a petite older woman with brown hair, who stands chatting to a group of others across the room. "Her name is Laura. She's one of their government relations team. I've heard she has a picture of my face on a dartboard in her office. So every year, I come to this and trap her in a conversation for as long as possible. I think I'm finally starting to grow on her."

The woman catches Jesse's eye just then, and her face transforms into the most hideous grimace Rob has seen in a while before she remembers to force herself to smile and nod politely. Jesse raises his glass, nods back, and then turns to him with a mischievous grin.

Rob observes the interaction with a laugh. "Yes, looks like it. You're sure they didn't slip cyanide into your drink?"

"Ah, a martyr for the cause? I'm willing. But there are thousands of us filthy Greens. If I die, someone else will just rise up and take my place."

"Yeah, well," Rob drops his voice and sips his drink, forcing himself to look casual, even though it's becoming increasingly hard to act as if everything is business as usual between them. His eyes flit down to his lips, lingering there for two seconds too long. "I don't want that to happen."

Jesse catches him looking. "You're in the minority here tonight. Are you wearing glasses again?"

Rob blinks, and it takes a moment before he realizes what he means.

"Oh, these?" He gestures to the ones on his nose, which he had slipped on this morning after they'd arrived in the mail. He can't deny that he was hoping he would notice. "Uh, they're not prescription lenses."

"Why wear them then?"

He's doing it again, that thing he always does: looking at him like they're alone. Bedroom eyes, he realizes. That's what they are. It's a shame they're so far from his bedroom here. He doesn't normally get this flustered by his flirting, but something about the public nature of it and the way Jesse is focused intently on him makes his throat feel as dry as a bone. He shifts where he stands and tries to get a handle on himself.

"Well," he says, barely able to hear his own voice over the sound of his heart pounding, "you said you liked them."

Something inside Jesse breaks, like a slow, snaking crack in glass shattering at the slightest provocation. He can see him thinking as he takes a look around them before finally setting his glass down on a nearby table with a decisive tap. He does it in a way that indicates Rob should do the same, and, taking the hint, he does.

"Have you seen this room over here?" Jesse asks out of nowhere, and Rob gives him a funny look.

"No, which room are you-"

Before he can say another word, he finds himself being whisked into the large closet where they checked their coats upon arrival. The attendant has disappeared somewhere in the meantime, and they're able to hide themselves away behind several rows of clothing racks full of expensive coats and jackets. They provide more than ample camouflage, and Rob is just about to ask what the hell he thinks he is doing when Jesse plucks the glasses right off his nose, pulls him forward by his belt, and kisses him silent.

Normally he'd lose himself in his lips and the addictive press of his body, but given the setting, he doesn't think that would be wise. Rob pulls away after a moment, grinning stupidly.

"What'd you do that for?"

"You wore them for me," Jesse states, pupils dilated with want like he's never seen before. He turns over the glasses in his hands, almost in disbelief.

He plays coy and takes them from his hand, sliding them back on. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't."

"You did," is all Jesse says, and this time, he doesn't bother denying it. 

He can't lie to him. He feels like an open book, spine pried open and laid out on the table. There is nowhere to hide.

Rob has hardly a second's notice before Jesse's lips come crashing down on him again, and this time, he gives himself over to it ever so slightly more. He feels lightheaded like he's been deprived of oxygen for too long. It knocks the wind out of him when Jesse backs him up and pins him against the wall, but somehow he resists, even though he senses resistance may ultimately prove futile.

"We can't," he hisses as Jesse's lips migrate to his neck. He isn't sure he's ever seen him so ravenous, and he can feel his desire against his leg, equally so. "Not here. The farmers would love nothing more than a - God - than a sex scandal to ruin your career. And as much as I'd enjoy the irony, I'm not fucking you in a closet."

That finally seems to get through to Jesse, and he pulls back at last, dropping down into a wooden chair near the end of one of the racks. The only sound to be heard as they straighten their ties and suit jackets is their breathing, both eyeing each other with hunger but not daring to cross the Rubicon between them.

"Sorry," Jesse manages finally, as he wipes off his mouth with the back of his hand. "I don't know what's gotten into me."

"I have, evidently," Rob jokes as he cleans the smudges from his glasses. "Although not literally. I'm assuming you wouldn't mind, though."

Jesse has to shut his eyes at that, running his hand over his face as if in agony.

"You know, you can't say things like that and then tell me I can't have you."

In what must be a feat of willpower, they take a breather for another few minutes. After they've cooled off, Jesse gathers his wits once more. 

"Have you thought about what we discussed?"

His ability to switch between work and play at a moment's notice leaves Rob reeling.

"Back to business already?" he remarks as he adjusts his shirt cuffs. "I haven't talked to Sigrid if that's what you're asking."

"If you talk to Sigrid, you know what she'll say. Leak it to the media on your own, set the events in motion, and she won't be able to stop you."

"Yeah, well, it's a fine idea for you. You risk nothing and have everything to gain. It's a different story for D66."

At that, Jesse stands and walks over to him. He's intoxicatingly close, and Rob knows at once he won't be able to talk business under these conditions. He wonders if this is intentional, if he cornered him here for a reason. 

They're politicians, as Jesse was so keen to remind him once. They do everything for a reason.

As if able to read his mind, he observes, "You're wondering if I'm doing this to help GreenLeft. Using you."

"Can you blame me?" Rob retorts though he can't manage to put much power behind the words. He swallows and softens his tone. "You know the way things work around here. You know how people are."

They lapse into silence for a moment, and then without warning, Jesse reaches up, placing his hands on his cheeks and drawing him in for a kiss that makes Rob weak in the knees: nothing forceful, but instead impossibly tender, silk and honey and butter all wrapped into one. He melts against him almost immediately, as malleable as clay beneath his hands. He has never been one to be led around by his prick, but it's hard not to be when someone kisses like this. All the blood in his body goes rushing straight to his cock.

"Just trust me," Jesse draws back enough to murmur against his lips. The words force a shiver down his spine. He meets his eyes, and they're as black as night, like dark hooks for the soul. "Trust me."

He does, God help him. Only time will tell if that's a mistake.

It isn't long before Jesse's hands begin to wander his body, growing bolder. Rob is acutely aware that he won't be able to hold out for much longer if he keeps this up. He won't come in his pants or grope him like a teenager; it's beneath them. He's about to suggest a change of location when, thankfully, Jesse does it for him.

"Which is closer?" he pants, ripping himself away. He begins pacing up and down the rows of coat racks, and Rob realizes he must be trying to find theirs. "Your flat or your office?"

He finds his wool overcoat first, labeled with his name, and hands it to him. Rob slips it on, dazed. 

"Better do my flat."

"Why?"

He doesn't miss a beat. "You're not going to be able to stay quiet with the things I'm going to do to you."

Jesse freezes in place at that. It takes a lot to render him speechless, and so Rob relishes the sight before the other man shakes it off, sliding his arms into the sleeves of his black peacoat.

"Is that a threat, Mr. Jetten?" he asks, just as they hear the door open and the coat check attendant take up her post once more.

"Just a promise," he tells him and nods at the unsuspecting woman as they pass.

The icy November air does little to douse Rob's ardor. Every step of the walk to his flat is torture. Halfway there, he almost drags him into an alley to have his way with him there - but no. He's tired of the quick fucks and stolen moments and haste; if he'll have him, he'll damn well have him properly.

He wastes no time once they're alone in his flat, stripping them both of their clothing and laying him out on his bed. Again, he's struck by how naturally submission comes to Jesse. He never would've imagined that before they began, watching him in the debates as he dismantles his opponents without so much as a second thought. He drags his eyes over his body in silence from where he stands, looming at the end of the bed. He is perfect, olive-skinned and slender, the curls between his legs a shade darker than those on his head, and while anyone else might balk at being so exposed, Jesse doesn't. He lets him look until Rob grows tired of merely looking.

"See," Jesse begins with a smirk as Rob straddles him, positioning his legs on either side of his hips, "I thought being a top meant being in control."

"Not always," he corrects him, gliding his arousal gently against his. They both gasp, and Rob locks eyes with him, biting his lower lip and tilting his head to one side. "Not with me."

They play by his rules here. His tone is glib, flippant, telling him to take it or leave it. Rob doesn't need to ask to know which choice he'd make. 

Nearly cross-eyed from the teasing, the only response Jesse can summon up is: "Fuck."

Rob laughs.

"Gladly," he breathes as he sinks down onto him and pulls him under.

-

A week later, the headline runs in The Telegraph. 

Source: Cabinet formation deadlocked. New elections to come?

Once they pick it up, it spreads like wildfire throughout social media and the Kamer: rumors that the parties can't come to an agreement with Christian Union. That D66 and VVD no longer want to work with them at all. That new elections are imminent. The source? Someone privy to coalition negotiations, high up in party leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

Rob tells them not to mention which party. More cover that way, he figures. He chooses a reporter he can trust from a paper the world will trust and sets the formation on fire with little more than a phone call.

The article throws talks into chaos, just as expected, but what Rob doesn't expect is how rapidly the chaos descends and how ugly it becomes. It leads to somewhat of a shouting match between negotiators the next time they convene, tucked away in a conference room in the Binnenhof. Segers accuses them of talking to the press behind his back, of only pretending to want to work with him to stay in power. Rutte denies it, but predictably, no one believes him. Sigrid denies it too, and Segers accuses both of them of not being able to keep their members in line.

It ends with him storming out of the room in a huff, having pulled his party out of talks. As he goes, Rob watches the pieces of their plan fall into place with every step, knowing now that there is no going back.

Once the dust has settled and the others have vacated the room too, he makes his way over to Sigrid, who sits alone at the long table with her head in her hands, as defeated as he's ever seen her. He sits down beside her with a sigh, and they remain there in silence for a while before she finally raises her head.

"So that's it," she murmurs, flipping her notes closed and leaning back in the chair. "It's over. We're going to new elections." 

He opens his mouth to say something, but she continues.

"Who was their source? Someone high up in party leadership in VVD or D66? Who the hell would have-" Her voice catches. He thinks for a moment she might cry. "Who the hell would've done this? And why?"

A horrible sense of guilt comes over him, but he dismisses it. It's not a productive emotion, not one he can use now. He'll feel it later.

"I don't know," he lies, unnerved by how easily it rolls off his tongue and unnerved further still by the fact that she doesn't appear to doubt him for a second. "We might not go to new elections. There could still be another way."

"How?" she snaps, anger flaring up like a phoenix from the ashes of this coalition. "We've tried everything. I…" Sigrid takes a breath, sniffing but stubbornly refusing to let anyone see her cry. "I failed us. I'm sorry."

"Bring GreenLeft and Labour back to the table," he insists, leaning forward slightly, and she looks at him like he's gone insane.

"Did you sleep through the weeks we spent negotiating with them? Where the hell have you been, Rob?"

He shakes his head and gestures with one hand on the table, confident and focused. He can see the road laid out ahead of them as clear as day in his mind's eye. He can see Jesse and the world they want at the other end. The toughest part - venturing down it - remains, but he's never been more certain that it's the right direction.

"Look," he urges, lowering his voice. "You ran on the promise of new leadership. So let's give it to them. We've made enough concessions over the last four years. If we'd governed with Christian Union, it would've been the status quo for four more. Maybe it's for the best."

"Even if we could get the others to agree to talks with them again, they'll never compromise. You know how Klaver is. You know how they both are."

He doesn't flinch. "What if I could promise they will?"

"How?"

"Just trust me," he says, echoing Jesse's words from before.

A flicker of curiosity unfolds in her eyes. With it comes something like suspicion, too, but Sigrid doesn't express it outwardly, and so he presses on.

"The country wants change. They want a more progressive government. They want us. We won the second-most seats in the election; that's a mandate, Sigrid. You know it is."

There is a pause. He swears it's the longest in the world, and then, at last, she drags her eyes up to meet his, the gears behind her eyes shifting into motion and her features settling back into that serene yet cunning facade he knows so well.

"How do we do it?"

He smiles, opens his notes, and begins.

"I have a plan."

Chapter Text

“The Supreme Court was clear in the Urgenda ruling: the government has a duty to protect the lives of its citizens by safeguarding our environment. Now, again, six years later, we aren’t on track to meet the necessary goals to be in compliance. There’s no doubt accelerating the closure of one of our coal plants will require government compensation, but compared to-”

“No,” Jesse interrupts from across the table, shaking his head. “Take that part out. Focus on the reasons why it’s necessary, not what the opponents will bring up. They’ll have time to make their own argument. Trying to get in front of theirs just leaves less time for your own.”

Considering that, Rob strikes a line through the words, then clears his throat and begins again, reading through to the next few lines. 

“Even without the coal phase-out law in place, the fact is that these plants are still economically unviable. According to recent studies, total net losses could amount to approximately €470 million by 2030 for all three remaining plants. RWE’s €3 billion investment in the Eemshaven power plant lost its value just five years after it entered into service, and-”

“See, you’re getting too bogged down in the numbers. People don’t want you to be a human spreadsheet.” 

Rob peers at him over the top of his papers. “I could argue that you don’t get bogged down in numbers enough.”

They’re seated in Rob’s office around the table in the middle of the room, half-eaten lunches scattered in front of them along with a few dozen pieces of paper. He hadn’t planned on going over his speech with Jesse before the debate tomorrow. They haven’t formed a coalition yet, and it’s not as if they usually consult with opposition parties on things like this, but Jesse had seen his name on the speaking list, asked about it, and before he knew it, they’d ended up here, hashing it out during their lunch hour.

“Here.” Jesse holds out his hand to take the papers. Rob hesitates, and he raises his eyebrows impatiently. “Do you want my help or not?”

He finally relents, handing it over and watching as Jesse picks up a pen, scanning through and striking things as he goes. When he finally hands it back, it looks like he’s crossed out nearly half the speech, turning the black lines into a sea of red with scribbles in the margins. Rob huffs.

“You know,” he says, feigning annoyance, although he finds it more amusing than anything. He tosses the speech down beside him, “I let you look at this so you could give me a few minor edits, not so you could decimate it. Remind me again why I’m taking advice from you?”

Jesse kicks his feet up onto the table with a smile that makes it agonizingly hard to focus on the economics of coal-fired power plants and takes a bite out of an apple. He isn’t wearing his shoes, Rob notices, feet clad only in a pair of black socks.

“Because you value my creative input?”

He tries to be mad but can’t quite manage it and ends up just shaking his head. “You’re lucky you’re cute. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so accommodating.”

“Oh, I’m cute, am I?” 

They can both sense this is edging toward something they don’t have time for today, as much as they might want it, and so Jesse sits up straight again, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He sets the apple aside. Rob can’t help but ponder the symbolism, forbidden fruit and all that.

“Look, the speech is good, but it’s too dry. Too…” He drifts off, then leans back in his chair. “Well, honestly? Too robotic, but I know you hate that word.”

Rob flattens his lips into a line and picks the papers back up, skimming through them before growing frustrated and casting them aside again. In all honesty, he’s exhausted by formation talks and the unrelenting pace of the Kamer, but he’s the party’s climate spokesperson. It’s not like he could pawn this off on someone else, even though recently he’s begun to feel like he has been running on caffeine and sheer willpower for so long that rest is an abstract concept. They sit in silence for a minute before he glances back up at Jesse, who has removed his jacket and sits in only a navy dress shirt in his typical bedraggled fashion.

“Why do you think people call me Robot Jetten?” he asks out of the blue, genuinely curious.

“On Twitter? Yes, that’s a favorite of theirs. It’s a good one,” he remarks, and Rob fixes him with a glare. “What? You really have to learn to take a joke in our line of work.”

“But so many people love an idiot like Thierry Baudet.”

“You want the truth? Baudet says what he truly feels. Are most of his opinions vile and offensive? Yes. But he’s funny. He cracks jokes in debate. He allows people to relate to him, and you don’t. You get up there and say-” Jesse uses a robotic monotone and mechanical arm motions for emphasis, “‘my D66 programming doesn’t permit me to answer that question.’ And you overprepare, with the end result being that you come across too wooden. Plus, you’re bad at giving non-answers.”

“Anything else wrong with me that you’d like to address?” Rob asks with a heavy hint of sarcasm, though he isn’t offended. In truth, he values his take on him more than he’ll admit. “Fine. How do you give a non-answer?”

“Ask me something you know I can’t answer.”

Rob pauses to think. “Why should anyone waste their vote on GreenLeft when GreenLeft always refuses to compromise and enter government to actually get anything done?”

Jesse cringes. “Harsh. But fair.”

He proceeds to give a long and flowery response that uses a lot of words to say precisely nothing at all but still dances close enough to the actual truth to be convincing. It’s expertly done and seems to require little thinking at all on his part, coming to him as naturally as breathing. The way he looks him in the eyes, the sincerity in his tone, and the conviction behind every syllable as it leaves his mouth are so engaging that if he didn’t already know he was giving him a non-answer, he’d never be able to guess.

“See?” Jesse says when he concludes. “I can say absolutely nothing, and you still feel like you got an answer out of me. When you give a non-answer, it feels like a non-answer. You get in your own way sometimes, Rob. Try preparing less.”

He is about to open his mouth to push back on that when the bells begin to ring over the intercom system in the building, signaling the imminent start of a vote. It’s an unwelcome intrusion of the outside world, ripping them from their bubble, but they both stand automatically and begin gathering up their things.

“What is the old trick for public speaking again?” Jesse asks as they make their way out into the corridor toward the exit. Other members have also begun to emerge from their offices, and they are promptly swept up in the tide. “Imagine your audience in their underwear? Try that.”

Rob snorts. “Imagining Geert Wilders in his underwear? I’d be too sick to my stomach to speak. And if I imagined you in your underwear, I would be far too distracted.”

They make their way into the chamber and take their seats just as Bergkamp calls them to order. The Kamer proceeds with the business of the day, nothing contentious or altogether interesting, until they reach the third item on the agenda: a debate on the budget for the state public broadcasting system. Rob isn’t scheduled to speak, so he sits back, assuming it will be relatively uncontroversial too - that is, until Wilders steps up to the rostrum for a motion and the chamber lets out a collective groan.

For the sake of his own mental health, Rob tries most days to tune the man out when he’s speaking, and at first, he’s successful, as he rails against D66 and the so-called left-wing elite for radicalizing the state media. He brings up Donald Trump for reasons Rob can’t quite follow, and Black Lives Matter, and then the media’s ‘crusade’ against Zwarte Piet, cramming in every inflammatory talking point to message to his base that he can in his allotted speaking time. It’s all unhinged, not unlike the ravings of a madman. It gives him a headache, and he starts to consider walking out when the man changes course all at once.

“Now we’ve been told the public broadcaster wants to implement diversity quotas for programming. Anti-white quotas, ladies and gentlemen. The state-funded broadcaster is going to profile our hardworking men and women. I mean, we’re turning the clock back eighty years here! What’s worse is that programs that refuse to participate in this ethnic cleansing will no longer be broadcast. It’s censorship, plain and simple. State-sponsored censorship. We might as well start burning books too.”

“I also hear they’ve introduced the term ‘people with a bicultural background.’ They want at least fifteen percent of the people in their programming to have a bicultural background. This is a new one for me. Who are all these ‘people with a bicultural background’? Does Mr. Klaver here have a bicultural background with his absent Moroccan father?” He chews the word Moroccan as if he tastes foul to him, with a hatred he doesn’t even attempt to conceal. “Or my colleague Mr. Graus, who is Limburgish, but also Dutch? Exactly how do we quantify being bicultural? It’s absurd. It is absolutely ridiculous.”

The mention of Jesse’s name makes him perk up at once, and Rob glances over at him across the room where he sits, listening in silence with his chin propped up on his hand. There’s no fire in his eyes, no indication he intends to stand and interrupt. No anger at all, in fact. If anything, he thinks he can see sorrow in him, trudged up by the words.

It’s no secret that Jesse grew up without a father. It’s a sore point for him, Rob knows, though he doesn’t mention it often. The slight isn’t overt, but the implication is unavoidable: that it’s no surprise a Moroccan man would be a deadbeat father. That somehow he’s lesser than the rest of them because he grew up fatherless. Even that he’s lesser than the rest of them because of his heritage in the first place. It’s how Wilders skirts the rules, dealing in microaggressions and indirect jabs, and it doesn’t get to him often, but hearing it directed at Jesse fills him with a sort of rage he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Before Rob can think twice, he finds himself standing and stalking up to the front of the room to interrupt. He has nothing prepared and little idea what he’ll say, but when Bergkamp recognizes him, the words flow out on their own, as if some external force has taken control.

“Madam Speaker, first, I would like to thank everyone at the public broadcasting system for the invaluable work they do in promoting access to information and lending a platform to Dutch people from all ethnicities and backgrounds. And, unlike Mr. Wilders, I think we should commend them for their diversity initiatives,” he begins, voice clear and strong. “All too often, children grow up not seeing anyone who looks like them on television. They think they’re alone. They don’t feel represented in the media they consume. As a gay man, this was how I felt, and sometimes it’s how I still feel. We have the opportunity to make sure everyone feels represented in the state media, and I believe it’s our duty as representatives elected by the people to take it.”

He pauses to take a sweep around the room. He can sense Jesse’s eyes on his back. He can feel his blood reach a boiling point in his veins. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, this thing bubbling inside of him like magma. Protectiveness, he realizes. That’s what it is. He feels almost like he’s been attacked.

“And I would like to add, the mention of my colleague’s Moroccan father has no place in this debate. Nor does the insinuation that no one should be surprised that a Moroccan man was an absent father. It’s offensive and unnecessary-”

Wilders shakes his head and points a finger down at him. “Now, see, at what point did I suggest that? This is the problem with your kind, Mr. Jetten. You get your panties in a twist and ‘cancel’ someone the second-”

“My kind?” he echoes in disbelief. “My kind. Can Mr. Wilders elaborate on what he means by that?” The man appears taken aback by his forcefulness, and Rob seizes on his hesitation to continue. “I think it might do Mr. Wilders well to make friends with a few of ‘my kind.’ Perhaps if he dressed better and had a competent hairstylist, he’d look less like a deranged seagull and more like someone worthy of our respect.”

The Kamer erupts in laughter and a chorus of desk-banging, and Rob steps away from the mic at that, letting it flow over him as he returns to his seat. Baudet nearly falls out of his chair. Sigrid sends an approving yet reserved smile his way. Rutte attempts to hide his guffaws at first but eventually gives himself over to them. Bergkamp has to call for order at least three times before everyone finally quiets themselves, but Rob notices even she is smiling as she does it.

Across the room, he can see Jesse chuckling into his hand. When he catches his eye, he gives him a small smile as if to say Thank you.

The debate comes to a close after another hour, and Rob gathers his things, looking over at Jesse’s seat only to find it empty. He doesn’t see him anywhere in the chamber at all, in fact, and he frowns, making his way up to the exit as a few other members stop to pat him on the back. Geert Wilders gives him a glare that could turn a man to stone on his way out, and he simply nods back, unbothered and victorious.

He doesn’t see him outside the exit doors, either, so he heads down the circular hallway that curves along the exterior of the chamber. One side is lined with narrow floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the late afternoon sun, refracting it onto the floor in golden columns. After a minute, he comes upon a little alcove with a bench, and there, hidden away from everyone, sits Jesse.

“Hi,” he greets, and Jesse musters up a smile that seems to require far more effort than usual.

“Hello.”

He can’t tell if he’d been hiding from him or waiting for him, but regardless, he takes a seat at his side. It’s a secluded spot with hardly anyone around, and it feels for a moment like they’re alone. Jesse seems troubled by something but doesn’t open his mouth to speak at first, before finally he glances sideways at him.

“You didn’t have to do that. Defend me up there.”

“I wanted to,” he replies softly. “Why didn’t you defend yourself?”

Jesse leans forward and fiddles idly with his wedding ring. “There’s no point wasting my breath debating Wilders. And I’m not the best one to speak on discrimination anyway.”

He blinks. “But… why, when-”

“What I experience isn’t even a drop in the ocean of what others do,” Jesse cuts in. “When you look at what Black people have to endure, Muslims… I don’t have the right to speak on it, not really.”

“Not on their experiences, maybe. But on your own. Just because it’s not as bad comparatively doesn’t make it any less real.”

“It’s not my issue. I stick to what I know: the climate. That’s what I’m best at fighting for.” He lets out a breath, then musters up a feeble grin. “Thank you, though. It meant a lot.”

They are silent for a moment, and Rob leans back, crossing his legs. “It was a low blow. He makes me sick. Mentioning my kind. I could tell he wanted to say more, but he’s probably trying to avoid another lawsuit.”

“Yes, well, he’ll be reeling from that deranged seagull comment for weeks.”

He laughs under his breath. “Sorry I didn’t give you credit for that.”

“It’s all right. I’ll let you have that one.”

Another silence follows, longer this time and heavier. They stare out the windows in front of them as the world goes by, yet time feels stuck still in this moment. He’s never more at ease than he is in his presence, even just sitting beside him without a word. They may be lovers, but he will always be his friend first, and in this place, the den of vipers that is the Tweede Kamer, he values that more than anything.

“You don’t talk about it much,” he begins cautiously. He knows what’s bothering him; it’s clear to him that Wilders had reopened an old wound that’d never fully healed. “I know you have, in interviews before. But never with me.”

Jesse shrugs as if to signal that it’s all right, that it was never that bad and not worth discussing, but finally, he relents and begins to speak in a low, mournful tone.

“Well, it was worst when I was young. Kids can be cruel. They’d call me a half-breed. Mock my hair. Make fun of me for not having a father. And it makes you wonder when you’re that young, what’s wrong with you. Why your father didn’t care enough to stick around. It’s damaging.” He rubs his palms together, staring down at them and avoiding his eyes. “I hated myself for a long time. And I don’t let Wilders get to me often, but something about today…”

Rob listens in reverent silence, barely even daring to breathe. He feels, in a way, like he’s meeting Jesse for the first time, meeting the child he used to be, who shaped him into the man he is. He’s endured far more than he lets on, and he wishes right then that he wouldn’t downplay his own suffering. He wonders if he does it for a purpose: to make himself more palatable for public consumption, maybe. They are never fully able to be themselves. It’s an unfortunate reality of the lives they’ve chosen, and the privilege of seeing a side of Jesse that he shows hardly anyone isn’t lost on him.

“I got that too when I was younger,” Rob confesses. “The bullying. Slurs. If anything, it made me stronger, prepared me to be here.” He swallows, voice catching as similarly bad memories surface. “It made me want to fight for a world one day where those things don’t happen.”

Jesse’s lips curl into a sad smile he finds inexplicably beautiful. 

“That’s the thing about adversity. It makes you stronger. Gives you perspective. And then, one day…” He drifts off and meets his eyes. For a second, Rob forgets how to breathe. “You rise above it.”

Rob glances around quickly. They are by themselves in the hallway, and most everyone out in the main lobby has dispersed back to their offices. They’re as alone as they’re going to get here, and so, lightly, he reaches over, resting his hand on his knee in a tacit show of solidarity.

“It’s why we need to be here,” he tells him. “We’re here to represent the people everyone forgets. The ones they don’t view as human. Every time I shake Baudet’s hand or look Wilders in the eyes and remind them that I’m their equal, it’s more powerful than anything I say. The simple fact of our existence is… rebellion.”

Jesse lays his hand over the top of his. He’s looking at him in a way Rob can feel as far down as his knees, a way he can tell is reserved only for him. It’s softer. Deeper. It carries a meaning he doesn’t think he should try to decipher.

“That’s a good line,” Jesse comments, at last, returning to form. “You should use it in a speech.”

Rob can’t help but laugh. Sometimes they’re such politicians he can’t stand it, but he guesses it’s the only thing they know how to be. In truth, he wouldn’t have Jesse any other way.

“That’s what I was just thinking, actually.”

-

“Oh, here. This one has to be my favorite one so far. ‘Looks like Robot Jetten finally got the humor software update. Or maybe there’s just a glitch in his code.’”

Rob laughs as they step inside his flat later that evening, both glued to their phones and scrolling through social media. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive thus far, with the moment being clipped and replayed on talk shows at least a dozen times already. He’s already seen a cartoon depicting Wilders as a seagull, with him, Sigrid, Rutte, and a few others as fish in the ocean trying not to be snatched up into his beak. The Twitterverse seems astounded that he has the ability to joke, and even more so that he has the ability to be funny when doing it. 

He’s sure it won’t last and everyone will be back to panning him for something in the next news cycle. In the meantime, though, he plans on savoring his triumph.

“That’s a good one,” he tells Jesse as he opens a bottle of red wine and pours both of them a glass. He bites back a yawn, exhausted by the events of the day but buoyant with satisfaction. “You were right when you told me to prepare less. I wasn’t so bogged down by my notes. I just said what I wanted to.”

“You were brilliant,” Jesse says as he comes to stand at the counter beside him and takes a sip of his wine. “And what can I say? I’m an excellent teacher.”

Rob finds himself leaning into him before he can help it. He sets his glass aside on the counter and plucks Jesse’s out of his hand, too, allowing them to inch closer and stay there, not kissing, just simply breathing each others’ oxygen for a moment. Jesse’s chin brushes up against his face, and he can feel the scratch of the end-of-the-day stubble forming there. It provokes an almost visceral reaction inside him. He takes a hit off his cologne, too, and suddenly all he wants is to have that smell all over him. Have him all over him.

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Rob scolds as he shrugs off his suit jacket and leans in again. 

“Isn’t that what you want?” he prods. He slides a hand into the back pocket of Rob’s trousers, tugging him closer. “To be full of me?”

One way or another, they end up in his bedroom, familiar territory for both of them. As soon as Jesse lays him down on the bed and crawls atop him, however, he feels his body start to give in to its own fatigue, but he tries to push through, focusing on the feeling of his lips on his neck and his hands as they stroke between his legs. Normally he’d be hard by now, but he’s almost too tired to manage and inadvertently lets out a yawn before he can remember to stifle it.

Clad only in his boxers, Jesse pauses and looks up with raised eyebrows. “Am I boring you?”

“No,” Rob insists, shifting beneath him to hitch up a leg and draw him closer. “Sorry. Keep going.”

He obliges, but then, hardly a minute later, he yawns again. This time Jesse rolls off him completely, settling down at his side.

“If you’re yawning,” he quips, “clearly I’m not doing something right.”

He sits up, removes his glasses, and sets them on the nightstand, rubbing at his eyes. “No, you’re… you’re perfect. I’m just tired. Keep going.”

This time, he doesn’t resume his ministrations. Instead, he just reaches over to the pillow on Rob’s side of the bed, pats it to give it a fluff, and motions for him to lie back.

“Lay down. You’re exhausted.” Rob opens his mouth to object, but the other man doesn’t budge. “You overwork yourself, and you’ll burn yourself out if you’re not careful.”

Rob considers protesting again, but the sight of his pillow and blankets is so enticing that he finds he doesn’t have it in him. After stripping down to his briefs, he crawls back into bed and lays on his side, where Jesse joins him not long after, tucking his body against his from behind like one puzzle piece notching into another. He thinks for a second that he’ll continue, maybe fuck him from the side like this, but he realizes he isn’t moving. He’s just lying there in the stillness, holding him.

Jesse runs a finger idly up and down the length of his arm, then laces their fingers together as he fades from consciousness. It feels like it’s been years since he got a good night’s sleep, and already he’s teetering on the brink of the abyss, trying desperately to hold on and cherish these moments with him. They get so few of them. Sleeping through even a second would be a waste.

But no. This doesn’t feel like a waste. Not at all.

He has no idea how long he drifts off, but he awakes sometime later to the sound of rustling followed by a rush of cold air against his back as Jesse withdraws.

“I have to go,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

He rolls over to face him, squinting as his eyes acclimate to the light. Go. He has to go. Back to his family. His wife. The ones he belongs to. He wants him to stay, but he could never ask him to. He is a dirty secret, at best, and at worst… He doesn’t even want to think about it.

“Okay,” he mutters groggily, watching as he dresses across the room. “Sorry we didn’t...”

Jesse shrugs that off and makes his way back over to the bed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. He lingers there for a second longer than he needs to, breathing him in before forcing himself to head for the door.

“Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rob watches him go like a specter in the night, left with only the faint scent of him on his sheets, the sweet, heavy burn of his kiss on his lips. They haven’t fucked, but he feels sated in a soul-deep way not even sex gives him. Before, he’d convinced himself that they only ever embarked on this for that purpose, but now-

Now, he isn’t sure. They have rules; he’d made sure of that. He was the one who’d insisted on them. No telling anyone. No mixing work and play. Certainly no feelings. But the first two were broken a long time ago, and suddenly he feels, of all the things to do, like laughing.

Rules were made to be broken, after all.

Chapter Text

The trees around the estate in Hilversum are barren the second time around, but Rob steps out of the car with his overnight bag in hand, a spring in his step, and a distinct lack of dread for the upcoming weekend regardless. 

Nothing will be much different about this round of formation talks. They’ll still be mired in the same disagreements and cramped together in old dusty rooms for hours on end, mainlining caffeine until their brains bleed - but when he swings the car door shut behind him, he finds himself staring at the person who’ll make all the difference this time.

Jesse. 

He is standing in the gravel driveway near a gaggle of press giving an interview in a casual blazer and jeans, which is more formal than most people here will bother with, he thinks. A few reporters peel off and pounce on Rob when they notice him approaching. Jesse’s eyes follow them when they do, and Rob gives him a nod as he takes his place next to him. It feels good to be able to say that, to know that they’re finally on the same side in this. The grittiest part of the formation is still ahead, and he’s sure by the end of this weekend, multiple profanity-laced rants will have been spewed by almost every negotiator here, but for, at least, the air is replete with promise, the energy electric and hopeful.

“Mr. Jetten,” one of the reporters begins as they elbow their way to the front and stick a microphone in his face, “is D66 excited to finally be in serious talks with GreenLeft and Labour?”

He catches Jesse’s eye briefly and winks, even though behind his mask of nonchalance, he can hardly breathe.

“Absolutely. I think we’ll be able to do great things together. I couldn’t be more thrilled for this weekend,” he tells them, the lie by omission rolling easily off his tongue.

He can’t tell them what he’s truly thrilled about, but he meets Jesse’s eye again, a look passing between them, and Rob knows he knows perfectly well.

-

Although the negotiations sometimes feel as constructive as repeatedly ramming his head into a wall, somehow, Rob doesn’t find them unbearable like before. He’s always distracted by Jesse to some extent, but he manages to hone his focus and drill down on the issues with a mental clarity he’s lacked since they started. By the end of the day, he’s satisfied for once with the progress they’ve made, and he can tell Sigrid is, too, even though they’ve had to drag their right-wing coalition partners along for the ride kicking and screaming. In the photos they take around the negotiating table, Rutte looks like a sullen child someone has coerced into a family portrait, and he figures he doesn’t really blame him.

Still, he can’t deny there’s an anticipation in his bones, the feeling that’s been simmering for days in the run-up to this weekend; the thought of what the night will hold once the house goes quiet, the staff depart, and the others retreat to their respective bedrooms. Even as the hour grows later and the daylight fades, he doesn’t let himself think about it, knowing that if he gets started, he’ll probably never stop.

Determined not to let his mind wander, he skips dinner to organize his notes and finalize a list of issues to revisit tomorrow, a decision he regrets later on when everyone begins heading off to their rooms for the night, and he’s missed out on his one opportunity for food. He always lets everything fall to the wayside when he’s fixated on something, even his basic human needs.

Sometimes, he wishes he really were a robot. It would probably be more convenient from a productivity standpoint.

He settles on raiding the fridge in the estate’s commercial kitchen sometime around one in the morning, which yields a disappointing selection of wilted salad and leftover desserts from dinner. Still, it’s better than nothing, and he’s just about to reach in when he hears someone clear their throat behind him.

“Looking for something?” Jesse asks with a wry grin, and he startles, then relaxes at the sight of him. 

“Oh. Hi. Uh, yeah. I missed dinner, and I can’t exactly order a pizza out here, so.” He stays still, bathed in the cool blue light from the refrigerator, before finally withdrawing a bit of leftover salad and setting it on the stainless prep station behind him. “Are you looking for something?”

“Yes,” Jesse confesses, hands on his hips. “You, coincidentally enough. And…”

He drifts off, then goes rummaging through the cabinets for a while before finally finding what he wants: a variety of liquor bottles stashed away for cocktail service. It’s slim pickings, and he ends up settling on a bottle of Dutch gin, which is the only thing full enough for both of them to drink. In the meantime, Rob hunts down a pair of plastic cups, which the other man fills far more than he should, but he doesn’t protest; all he does is watch him, grinning like an idiot. He hasn’t done anything like this since university, and he feels reckless in a way he never allowed himself to be even back then. Their fingers brush as he hands him his cup, and when he catches that familiar look in Jesse’s eye, he feels infinitely more so.

They down the drinks straight, not bothering with any mixers, and once Rob has recovered, he asks, “Are we drinking to forget or to celebrate?”

“That’s up to you,” Jesse replies, leaning up against the side of the prep station with him. “But my vote is for celebrating.”

“Well, I wouldn’t do that just yet. There’s still plenty of time for this to go sideways.”

“I’m a glass-half-full sort of person. Speaking of-” He stops and reaches over, filling their cups again, then passing his back to him. “Here.” 

They drink once more, and Jesse shakes his head, hissing from the afterburn before settling his eyes on him again. It’s dark, the only illumination coming from the silver moonlight seeping in through the window and pooling on the ground. They’re both shrouded by shadow, but Jesse’s eyes catch the light at a certain angle that takes his breath away, the whites of them almost gleaming.

“I’m glad we’re here together,” Rob remarks, voice low and sincere. Jesse raises his eyebrows suggestively, and he backpedals with a scoff. “Not that. Our parties, I mean.”

“But also that.”

“Yes, also that,” he acknowledges. “But I mean it. You’re an upgrade from Segers.”

Jesse chortles. “That isn’t much of a compliment. A goldfish would be an upgrade from Segers. And it would probably be just about as much fun, too.”

“Probably,” Rob affirms. “Still. I have a good feeling about this. You’re going to have to budge on nuclear power, though.”

“I know. I won’t like it. Neither will the rest of the party. But I can sell it to them.”

“Well, I won’t either, but Rutte and Hoekstra are dead set on it,” Rob insists, picking idly at the bowl of salad next to him. “I know the waste is an issue. But we can’t power the country with hopes and dreams.”

“You sound like Thierry Baudet.”

That forces a horrified shiver through him. “Oh, God. I take that back then.”

“What are your thoughts on the ministerial line-up?” Jesse asks, inching toward him slightly. “Would you want a post?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, if it was the right one, but I’d rather stay on as MP for a few more years, I think.” He takes a sip and looks at him closely. “You?”

“If they’d give me the economic affairs and climate portfolio, then yes. Which they’ll never do if they know what’s good for them. So, no.” He pauses. “I’d miss you if you left the Kamer, you know.”

He says the words more tenderly than he should. They strike across his skin like a match, making him shift in his seat and suppress a shudder - not a horrified one, this time. If he weren’t half-tipsy already, Rob might be able to find the willpower to shut this down, but he is, and so he doesn’t. He just craves more, with the feverish desperation of an addict in need of their next hit.

Has Jesse gotten closer to him? Somehow he has, and he can’t remember which one of them moved.

“Well,” he undertones, “then maybe I wouldn’t be that interested.”

Jesse breaks the spell first by withdrawing slightly. “You’re capable of it, though. More capable than most of the people here. Even if everyone still looks at us like we’re children sometimes.”

“Every time we’re away on one of these weekends, I feel like one. We’re all children, and Mark Rutte is our disappointed father.”

Jesse barks a laugh. “I know. His polo shirt today was godawful.”

“You know what, I take it back,” he quips, raising the cup to his lips and downing the remainder of it in one go. “I am drinking to forget that.”

They knock back another shot, and Jesse offers one more, but he refuses, knowing he can’t afford a hangover in the morning. Instead, they split a piece of leftover cheesecake from the fridge, legs drawn up under them on the table, and for a while after that, they just sit there in comfortable silence, winding down together after the day. They’re close, arms pressed together, enough to set him burning but not even close to enough to satisfy him. Jesse’s eyelids are heavy, the faintest of smiles on his lips and that ever-present look in his eyes. He doesn’t even seem aware of the way he stares at him sometimes. 

Or maybe he is, Rob thinks. Maybe he always has been.

“It’s late,” he states, a half-hearted attempt at an exit that Jesse pointedly ignores.

“You don’t wear cologne like you used to,” he observes.

He moves in to press a kiss on his shoulder. Both it and the non-sequitur throw him for a loop so much that he fumbles for words.

Finally, he clears his throat. “I didn’t know you’d noticed.”

“I noticed everything.”

He’s positive right then that Jesse will lean in and kiss him, put him out of his misery, but he doesn’t. He holds himself back, almost like he enjoys denying him. Every breath he takes feels as if it steals one right from his lungs. He wants to ask him how long - how long he’d noticed everything, when he’d started noticing everything - then remembers his answer from before when he’d asked him how long he had wanted him: always.

“I… can’t get it on you,” he croaks. “The cologne.”

“I want it on me,” he rejoins, calm but ferocious just beneath the surface. Territorial, almost. It makes him shiver.

They shouldn’t be doing this here. Or anywhere, at all. Just like he shouldn’t want to get his cologne on him, all over him, and suck at his neck until everyone can see the marks he’d left behind. But he does, and that’s increasingly becoming an issue.

Somehow, he retains enough brainpower to take inventory of the room around them. They’re concealed enough from the doorway where they sit that they would probably hear someone walking in before they could see them. He isn’t sure how he can be so smart and so stupid at the same time, but then he can feel himself leaning closer and closer and decides he doesn’t really care, and right as he’s about to press his lips down-

Jesse retreats, moving back just enough to tease them. It feels like a broken trust fall, like he’d leaned back blindly, and he’d stepped to the side, letting him crash straight to the ground. He makes a pained, borderline inhuman noise he’s never heard come out of his mouth before.

“Wait here,” the other man tells him, hopping down from the table and heading for the doorway. He looks flustered too, though he hides it well, “then come up in five.”

He watches him go without a sound, dumbstruck. He’s never been good at delayed gratification, and it feels almost like an act of cruelty to make him wait, but maybe that was the intention. He’s painfully hard, straining against his zipper.

He waits. He counts down the seconds. 

Then, after exactly three hundred, he follows.

-

The hallway housing the bedrooms on the second floor is thankfully both empty and carpeted, so he can pad his way down to the end as quietly as a ghost without anyone noticing him. Heart pounding, he nudges Jesse’s door open just enough to slip inside, and once he’s there, he finds him standing near the fireplace, stoking a growing flame in the hearth. He wonders if it’s to set the mood, then decides it’s probably also practical because the old, drafty windows here do almost nothing to keep out the December cold.

Not that they won’t be able to make up for it with body heat, though, he muses to himself.

The room is cozy and lavishly decorated, all Baroque-style antique furniture, hideous wallpaper, and dark wood trimmings. He’s always felt out of place in spaces like these, rooms that were built never imagining his kind would ever be allowed to enter, but his admiration of Jesse trumps his of the decor by far. He’s removed his blazer and stands only in his turtleneck and jeans, shoeless and relaxed. He comes to a stop in the middle of the room and admires the view until Jesse turns casually, looking almost as if he’d forgotten he was coming at all, but he knows an act when he sees one.

It’s far too hot in here all of a sudden, bordering on stuffy. He can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead and feels one beginning to form on his own. For a moment, all they do is stand there before Jesse sets aside the iron fireplace poker, dropping the last remaining barrier between them.

“So,” Jesse says without preamble. “How do you want me?”

God. If he were someone who let words bring him to his knees, that would probably do it. Jesse doesn’t even think twice about submitting to him now, but he realizes suddenly that he doesn’t want that tonight. They’re going to be coalition partners; they should be partners here, too, on a level playing field.

“Show me what you want,” are the words he hears leave his mouth instead.

He wonders half a second too late if that’s a mistake, but he’s surprised by the lack of wickedness in Jesse’s eye. He can always tell when he’s cooking up some sort of diabolical plan, and he isn’t. Instead, something in him just softens at the words, and he closes the distance between them, kissing him gently, undemandingly, in that same way he had in the coat closet, with both his hands on his cheeks. It’s too tender for its own good, or for either of theirs. 

For his part, Rob feels almost rabid now that they’re alone. He’s been anticipating this trip for more than a week ever since Sigrid had suggested it, and he returns the kiss at full force, holding nothing back. He realizes, with a wild surge of desire, that they’ve never spent the night together before. 

They have all night. Hours. More time than they’ve ever had.

He’s going to fucking devour him.

He sets about doing just that, urging him down on the bed and following a second later, but the shrill creak of the wooden frame beneath them kills the mood at once. Rob shifts at first, wondering if it was just a fluke, and is answered by another equally loud, rickety sound. Beneath him, Jesse breathes a laugh.

“Shit,” Rob swears under his breath. “This won’t work. The whole house will hear us.”

“Floor, then?” he suggests.

It’s a less than preferable solution, but it’s their only one, so he decides they’ll have to make it work. They pull as many pillows and mothballed blankets down onto the floor in front of the fire as they can, layering them over the Persian rug there. They do away with their clothing in short order, too, and it’s there that he lies back on the pillows, letting Jesse crawl atop him and spread him out. 

He works him with his hands and then his tongue for what feels like hours, trailing them across the angles of his body until he’s writhing beneath him, panting like an animal in heat and slick with sweat. He’s so hard he can feel his cock beginning to leak, but Jesse doesn’t pick up the pace accordingly; he just stays steady, feasting on every part of him. His touch is reverent, like Midas turning him to gold and worshiping his creation. Even though it kills him, Rob still doesn’t attempt to take charge. He’s always been a control freak and stubbornly independent, even to his own detriment sometimes, but he gives himself over into his hands, trusting him without a second thought.

Their skin looks almost bronze in the dim firelight, licked by the flames. It’s too hot to handle. He feels overheated, and he can’t seem to catch his breath. When he sees Jesse begin to kiss his way down his stomach, he knows that won’t be happening anytime soon, and he gives himself over to that fate, too, not bothering to fight it.

“You’re…” Jesse breathes against his stomach. He looks rapt. Dazed. Almost as lost as he is. “God, you’re gorgeous.” 

“You’re torturing me,” he hisses back, and Jesse only chuckles in response, not bothering to deny it.

In the back of his mind, Rob wonders if this is what he wanted after all: gentle and slow instead of the fast and hard fucking they normally do, sex for the purpose of sex, nothing more than animal impulses. He thinks this probably breaks every damn rule in the book, but then Jesse is settling himself between his legs, those disarming brown eyes locked on him, and leaning in, and taking him into his mouth – and suddenly, he’s not doing much thinking about anything at all.

It isn’t long before he’s teetering on the edge. He closes his eyes, trying to stave off his orgasm and let him edge him further when all at once, he feels movement, accompanied by the familiar sound of a bottle cap popping open. Soon there’s pressure inside him, the fullness of a finger stretching him open, then two. It’s an assault of sensation and combined with the feeling of his mouth around him, it begins to override his senses. He crooks his fingers against the sensitive spot inside him, not letting up on the swirls of his tongue, and Rob has to bite down on his lip so hard he worries he might chew it clean off.

“If you-” he stammers, then gasps when he shifts his fingers again, rising up off the blankets slightly. “If you keep… d-doing that, I’m gonna-”

“I know.” Jesse pulls away long enough to give him a lazy grin. “That’s the goal.”

“I said… I said, do what you want,” he chokes out, voice strained, silently begging him to do something else, anything else. Anything but unraveling him so quickly, getting him to admit how far gone he is. 

He has him. He has him, and he knows it, dammit.

“This is what I want,” he tells him simply, without hesitating. “I want to make you come.”

It’s too much at once: the words, the delicious pressure, the building and tightening between his legs, the urging in his voice and the look in his eyes, and the way he doesn’t seem concerned with his own pleasure, not even a bit, not at all. 

It’s too intimate. Too selfless. Too much. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, burying a hand in his curls when he resumes sucking him and letting his head fall back onto the pillow. He can feel himself arcing off of the cushions toward the heat of his mouth, seeking more even though he tries to battle his instincts. He’s humiliated by how quickly he’s reduced him to this state, and somehow that only turns him on more.

Against his better judgment, because clearly, he’s bent on self-destruction tonight, he looks down to watch him. He can see Jesse clocking every reaction of his body, brushing the fingers of his other hand over the goosebumps on his leg and reading them like braille, decoding him with no trouble at all. Rob bunches the blankets beneath him in his other hand, and he notices that too, reaching over and lacing their fingers together, then holding their entwined hands against the jut of his hip. He squeezes his hand so hard his knuckles turn white, clinging to it like a lifeline as he begins to buckle underneath the pleasure.

He’s terrified of him touching him like this. Holding his hand. Looking at him with that tenderness he always insists on, whether he knows he’s doing it or not. Trying to make love to him when they’ve left love out of this equation.

He feels naive for thinking he wouldn’t be diabolical if given free rein to do whatever he wanted. Of course he would be. He’s Jesse.

He doesn’t know how he manages in his state, but all at once, Rob feels himself pulling him off, performing somewhat of a takedown maneuver and reversing their positions. It’s one part defense mechanism and one part desire to draw this out longer, and Jesse lands with a breathless huff on the pile of bedding. For a moment, they stay there like that without speaking, as Rob takes a series of deep breaths, letting his impending orgasm fade and centering himself. 

He doesn’t want to waste time with refractory periods or recovery. He doesn’t want to come quickly and waste this, either: the sight of Jesse as his chest rises and falls rapidly with his breath, flushed deep red, lips pink and damp with saliva. He looks delectable there at his mercy, as he should be.

“I thought we were doing what I wanted,” Jesse protests, but his eyes are dancing, and he knows he isn’t exactly upset about this turn of events. 

“I know,” he breathes the words into his mouth greedily, kissing him. “But I want to fuck you. Let me.” He hesitates, then adds a pitifully desperate: “Please.”

A moment goes by without a word, the only sound to be heard the crackle and pop of the logs next to them and their heavy breathing. Rob swears they’re running out of oxygen here between the two, then wants to laugh when he realizes he’s pondering carbon emissions even in the throes of passion. Finally, unable to come up with any words, Jesse just nods, swallowing heavily, and his consent eviscerates any last bit of sense in him.

It’s selfish, doing this. Asking him to do what he wants and then insisting on having it his way instead. He’s selfish and self-aware enough to acknowledge that about himself, but this is easier for another reason, too: putting a safe distance between them, a barrier.

As long as he’s in control, he won’t allow this to get out of hand. So he holds him down and rides him with the fire raging at their side until his vision goes blurry, until he swears the flames are consuming them both. Until he starts to wonder if he’s actually in control at all.

-

They eventually make their way back to the bed, which is where he wakes in the morning, freezing and buried under blankets, the fire having died down to embers overnight.

He reaches over beside him out of instinct, and when he finds only ice-cold sheets, wrinkled where a body had lain, his heart snags in his chest. It’s a familiar thing, waking without him there. He’s been here before. Probably he should’ve expected it. Still, it hurts far more than it should, but when he rolls over, he finds Jesse seated on the cushion in the bay window wearing boxers and an unbuttoned dress shirt, watching him without a sound.

“Good morning,” Jesse says with a grin that he can’t help but return, a feeling of relief unfurling in his chest.

There isn’t much sunlight; it’s a pale, overcast sort of dawn, the kind that makes him want to stay in bed for hours and shirk his responsibilities. He yawns and doesn’t sit up at first. He just lets himself lie there and watch him too, all frizzy hair, rumpled clothing, and sleepy, satisfied eyes. He doesn’t want to leave this moment because he isn’t sure when they’ll be able to have another like it, but he knows that he has to before he falls back into whatever trap he’d been caught in last night. 

He’s smart. Sensible. He won’t let him cloud his judgment any more than he already has, and so he peels back the blanket, the cool air on his skin bringing him back down to earth as unceremoniously as the crush of gravity.

“What time is it?” he wonders aloud, rummaging around for his phone beside him. He has no idea where it got off to during last night’s sequence of events. He might’ve thrown it in the fire for all he’d cared.

Jesse looks at his own, then tells him, “Six fifty-one.”

Saved by the bell.

“I have to go,” he mutters as he rises and begins to collect his scattered clothing. “I’m meeting Sophie for a run at seven.”

He’s always liked Sophie, his counterpart in Rutte’s party, in a way he doesn’t like most others in The Hague. They’ve gotten into the habit of running together in the mornings here as a way of blowing off steam, and as much as part of him wants to stay in this bed, he feels like he needs to clear his head after last night when he’d told him to do whatever he wanted, and he’d just touched him like some sort of holy relic.

The images replay themselves in his mind in flashes, and he gulps.

From his position by the window, Jesse shoots him a look of disbelief. “I don’t know why you inflict misery on yourself like that.”

“It isn’t misery,” he contends with an eye roll, stepping into his slacks. “Here it’s diplomacy, believe it or not. It helps keep her and Rutte onside. You should come with us.”

“You gave me enough exercise last night. And I would never be able to keep up with you.”

“You keep up with me here just fine,” he counters cheekily. He makes his way over to him after he’s fully dressed, bending down and pecking him on the lips. He can feel Jesse lean in for another kiss, but he pulls away prematurely, clearing his throat. “I’ll see you at breakfast then.”

He can feel his gaze tracking him as he heads for the door, but he knows turning back will be one more in a long line of mistakes he’s made since they’ve been here, so he doesn’t. Unusually shaken and jittery, he creeps back down the hallway to his room and slips on his athletic wear, then puts his hair in order as best he can. Sophie is waiting for him at the bottom of the staircase when he emerges. He pastes on that winning smile of his as soon as she comes into view, stilling the tremble in his hands and stepping back into the fray.

Showtime.

Chapter Text

Once, Sigrid told him that cabinet formation is a lot like childbirth. 

Rob has no basis of comparison, obviously, but he thinks it sounds about right: messy, bloody, long, and painful. Then, the end result is a seemingly lovely coalition that might fall apart in a month or be forced to resign in a year after a scandal. Like any child, it could grow up to be a success or turn out to be a dysfunctional nightmare, or somewhere in between, as is the case most of the time.

He loses track of the number of times he has to talk Jesse off the ledge and keep him from pulling out of talks. Sigrid handles the others with her deft, diplomatic touch, and through their combined efforts, by some miracle, they reach an agreement by mid-December. No one is thrilled with it in the end, but everyone can live with it at least, and the country lets out a collective sigh of relief as the longest formation in history comes to a close.

There is a celebratory feeling in the air at the annual holiday party held for members and staff in the main hall of the Kamer building a week later. It’s always a festive affair, but it feels exceptionally so this time around, as the ugly past year comes to a close and they prepare to begin a new chapter in the next. It’s black-tie dress, and the building is as decorated as the guests, with garland lining the railings of the second-story walkways, lights hanging across the span of the room, and a towering Christmas tree situated in the middle. A string quartet is stationed in the corner, the sounds of their rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ flitting through the air and making the hall feel like an intimate venue despite its size.

Mulled wine is on offer, which has always been his weakness, and Rob imbibes a bit more than he should, but he figures that he’s earned it between all the sleepless nights and endless days. He spends the first hour circulating around the room until he retreats up to the walkway on the second story, where he takes a moment to gaze down at the party below. 

He finds Jesse at once, his eyes drawn to him instinctively, though he can’t deny he was searching for him. He is there in a crisp black suit and bowtie with a drink in his hand, laughing about something with Lilianne Ploumen, Labour’s party leader. He’s so naturally magnetic, Rob thinks, and dangerously aware of the effect he has on people. He can draw the eyes of a crowd in seconds. He can’t take his eyes off him.

He should be happy the formation is over, and he is. Of course he is. The work of the Kamer has concluded for the year. They have recessed until January. Usually, their winter break is the time of the year he looks forward to more than anything, yet he can’t help but feel agitated knowing he won’t see him for almost a month. He’s restless already just thinking about it.

Christmas is a time to spend with family. Jesse will be with his. He will be with his, too. It’s the natural order of things. It’s the way their lives are; they run parallel, overlapping occasionally, but fundamentally they are separate and always will be. Yet sometimes, he wishes-

“Merry Christmas.”

A voice draws him out of his thoughts. He looks over and finds Sigrid approaching, clad in a forest green dress with a glass of wine in her hand. She peers at him through narrowed eyes, as if she can tell he’d been lost in his own mind. To some extent, he realizes he always is; whenever he isn’t with him, he just spends his time wishing he could be.

Rob nods back, raising his cup to her. “Merry Christmas, Sigrid.”

She takes her place at his side and leans on the railing, too, observing the party with him as it carries on below. Thierry Baudet is surrounded by a flock of fawning sycophants from his party and seems to be drunk already, dancing around the string quartet while miming one of the violinists. He spots Rutte in one corner, talking to Wopke Hoekstra with the biggest smile he’s seen on his face since his near downfall earlier in the year.

It only makes sense he’d be happy, having secured his place as the longest-serving prime minister in history; Teflon Mark, as everyone calls him. The man is like an extremophile, thriving in conditions that would kill most others. Rob has to admire his ability to survive in this place for so long when sometimes he feels like he’s already grown weary of it all.

“The leak was you, wasn’t it?” Sigrid asks without warning, her calmness belying the gravity of the words.

It seems to be more of a rhetorical question than anything. Sigrid isn’t really looking for an answer. She isn’t looking at him at all, either, her eyes still directed at the party below, and so he swallows heavily, quelling the rising panic inside him and not daring to respond. She knows the truth already, or else she wouldn’t have approached him in the first place.

There is a loud burst of laughter just then, and they both find their eyes drawn back over to Jesse, who has been joined in his circle by a few other members of GreenLeft and Labour and is busy telling a story with animated hand gestures. Rob tries not to look too close for fear he might give himself away, but he wonders if he already has. He can’t seem to hide what he feels for him, no matter how hard he tries. 

“You and Klaver,” she comments, confirming his worries at once. “You’re close.”

“We’re old friends, yes.”

Sigrid hums to acknowledge she’s heard him, but he can tell she doesn’t believe that, and he’s scared to realize he doesn’t know what she does believe. A moment passes in silence, and then she turns to face him fully, voice soft but stern. She has never needed to shout or showboat to command respect, and he finds himself frozen in place beneath her gaze, pinned down like an insect.

“I know I don’t need to remind you that your loyalty is to me and D66 before anyone else,” she tells him. “It’s good that you’re close with him. It'll be useful for us. But don’t confuse that closeness with a sense of obligation. We’ve lucky your trick with Christian Union worked; it could’ve just as easily ruined us. Next time, come to me first. We’re done with the formation, yes, but now the real work begins. I cannot have you going off on your own and doing something like that again.”

His throat tightens, but he doesn’t let it show and only nods tensely. “I understand.”

Once more, there is a dubious look in her eyes that signals she doesn’t quite believe that, either. However, Sigrid doesn’t verbalize it and excuses herself, disappearing back down to the party and leaving him alone once more. 

It’s only after she’s gone that he releases the breath he’d been holding. He isn’t surprised she worked out him being the source on her own; she speaks six languages, but they might as well count him as the seventh for how well she knows him. He’d assumed one day that she would learn the truth, but he can’t seem to slow his rapid heartbeat or stem the flow of sweat on his palms. He’d already been on edge this evening, and now he feels like he’s been pushed right off that edge, descending into darker thoughts than usual.

Time for another drink.

He makes his way back to the party and locates one with ease. The mulled wine warms him from the inside out, and he tastes dangerously little of the alcohol because of the spices, a hearty mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and anise. Before he realizes it, he’s downed another three cups, and the world has begun to slip out of focus, the chatter around him muffled as if he were underwater listening to something above the surface. Still, no matter how much he drinks or how far away from him he wanders, Jesse remains as clear as a focal point. He can’t get away from him.

He is standing at one of the tables ladling another cup full when out of nowhere, he feels a hand brush his back, accompanied by the gentle pressure of fingers and a voice he could pick out of a crowd of hundreds.

“How many of those have you had?”

Rob looks behind him, and there he is, smiling an easy smile and eyeing him as if to determine precisely how drunk he is. Jesse looks good in a formal suit, wearing it like a second skin, though his bowtie is crooked and needs straightening. There’s always something about him like that, he muses. A wrinkled shirt or crooked tie or wayward curl. It suits him. It’s part of his charm.

Rob tries to remember the number but can’t seem to do it, and so he deflects, “Maybe I should ask you. You seem to have been watching me.”

“The same way you were watching me?”

That catches him off guard, and he looks back down as he fills the rest of his cup. He didn’t know he’d been so obvious, although he should’ve figured. He always is.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mutters dismissively.

“Mm. Of course.”

Once he’s filled his cup, they walk together across the room toward a space where fewer people might hover. However, other MPs stop them on their way, and they’re forced to endure the requisite small talk and boilerplate holiday wishes. He knows full well none of them actually want to know about his plans for Christmas, or how he’ll spend New Year’s Eve, or how he'll spend his time outside of work at all. Still, they stand there and act as if it’s the most fascinating thing they’ve ever heard, while he stands there and pretends as if he isn’t reciting the same damn answers for the thousandth time. Caroline van der Plas spends a good five minutes describing her kerststol recipe to him in excruciating detail, and he has no choice but to endure.

All the while, Rob can’t help but wish that they could get away from it all and be alone when they have so little time left together. He grows more tired each day of pretending to like the people around him. Pretending, even, to like himself, or at least the persona he portrays. It’s all performative. Politics is only theater, the old party leader Pechtold told him once, and he has learned over time how right he was. Parts are played, lines are learned, and far too often, all they do is go through the motions.

The formation is over. They’ve gotten the progressive coalition they wanted. He should be happy tonight, and he isn’t.

He takes a long, deep drink of his wine as those thoughts creep into his mind and his mood grows gloomier. That is when Jesse finally takes the hint and excuses them from the group, walking him over behind a large pillar where they are out of sight of the crowd.

“Alright, that’s enough,” he admonishes and, before Rob can react, plucks his cup right out of his hands, throwing it in a nearby trash bin. “I’m cutting you off.”

“I - wait, I was still-”

“This isn’t like you, getting drunk at a work event,” Jesse observes without flinching. Rob hates how well he knows him, sometimes. “What’s wrong?”

“First, I’m not drunk,” he asserts, but he couldn’t sell food to a starving man at the moment, and the words fall flat between them. “And second, nothing is wrong.”

He can tell by looking at his face that Jesse doesn’t believe him. He realizes that seems to be a common theme in all his interactions lately. He’s got to become a better liar somehow.

“How are you getting home?” Jesse changes course. “I assume you’re not walking by yourself.”

He folds his arms, indignant. “I resent the suggestion that I can’t.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” he laughs under his breath, nodding toward the door. “Come on. I’ll walk you.”

Relived to finally have an exit strategy, Rob doesn’t protest as they slip on their coats and then make their way outside. The cold bites at his cheeks once they do, but he feels so flushed from the wine and from the look in Jesse’s eyes that he hardly notices. Snow is falling in fat, fluffy flakes, sticking in their hair and forming a powdery layer on the ground. They set off in the direction of his flat without a word, beneath strands of garland and lights hung above the narrow streets. There are candles in every window, a contagious energy in the air. 

All around them, the city is adorned for Christmas, and it may be the drink, or perhaps just the good company, but it feels magical to Rob in a way it hasn’t before.

They turn a corner and come upon the Christmas market on the Lange Voorhout with stalls lining both sides of the street, full of vendors hawking their wares. There’s a sweetness in the air wafting over from a booth selling freshly-fried oliebollen. Lights are hung between the snowcapped trees, joining the streetlamps and fire baskets to wrap everything in a warm golden glow.

Rob has been to what feels like a hundred of these markets over the years, but they never excite him any less, and he insists on walking through, which Jesse can’t help but agree to with an amused eye roll. They vanish into the crowd, bundled unremarkably in their gloves and scarves and becoming just another pair walking together in the night. No one takes notice of them.

More than anything, he wishes that it could always be like this.

“So,” Jesse broaches the topic again after they’ve strolled for a while and stopped at a few stalls to browse, “you never did tell me what was the matter.”

The cold and the walk have sobered him up quite a bit, and Rob tucks his hands into his pockets. 

“The truth? I was thinking about winter recess, how I won’t see you. And then Sigrid told me she knows I was the source of the leak, that I need to be loyal to D66 more than I’m loyal to you. Which I knew already, but… I don’t know. I got in my own head.”

Jesse hums. “You do that a lot. It’ll only be three weeks.”

Three weeks. Three months. Three years. It’s all the same to him.

“I know. But I’ll miss you.”

He lets out a breath and watches it rise like smoke before his eyes. He can’t mention the other reason he doesn’t want to return home and spend time with his partner in their home, in the life they’ve built together. He’s terrified the guilt will eat him alive, but not terrified enough to stop this thing, whatever it is, that they’re doing, even if Jesse will only ever belong to him in half measures, behind closed doors, and in secret. He can’t want him to belong to him at all. He tries to shake the thought away, but it floats back to the surface over and over.

Jesse must notice that he’s still brooding because he attempts to joke, “I’ll send you a Christmas card, how about that?”

“Oh, like you did last year?” Rob replies with a laugh, his mood lightening ever so slightly. “The ones you had your staff stamp your signature on?”

He meets his eyes with a genuine look. “I’ll sign yours. Only yours.”

They pass a stall selling mulled wine just then, and, still tipsy as he is, he begins to gravitate toward it, roped in by the smell, before Jesse takes his arm and tugs him away with a chuckle.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chides and forces him to continue walking. “No, you’ve had enough for one night.”

His breath hitches in his throat when he touches him, and he feels a pang of dismay when he drops his arm, but they have no other choice here; he knows that. He catches himself noticing those things now. More disturbingly, he catches himself wishing things were different. It’s never bothered him before, and now it does, all the time.

And that, more than anything else, is what’s truly weighing on his mind.

Still, he doesn’t allow it to show, and as they walk along, side by side, they chat idly about everything and nothing. It’s pleasantly ordinary and beautifully mundane, and Rob loses himself in the moment before he can help it.

“Why don’t you move to The Hague?” Jesse asks as they pass a carousel draped in Christmas lights, full of laughing, rosy-cheeked children. “Don’t you get tired of commuting back and forth?”

“I like Ubbergen. When I go home at the end of the week, I can leave everything behind here. If I lived in The Hague, I could never escape.”

“What is it you’re escaping from?”

You, he thinks, but tells him, “Everything. The politics. The press. It’s a simpler life there.”

“If you want a simple life, you’re in the wrong line of work,” Jesse quips, and Rob concedes that point with a nod.

“Maybe.” They lapse into silence for a while, and then, he glances sideways at him. “Do you ever get tired of it, what we do? Pretending to be someone else? Hiding how you really feel?”

Jesse shrugs. “I’m as authentic as I can be. That sounds like more of a question for you.”

Dammit. As usual, Jesse has a better read on him than he has on himself. 

He retreats inside his own mind for a moment, and, sensing that, the other man pipes up again, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t lie about some things. I tell everyone I’m a vegetarian, but I have a weakness for rookworst. I eat it a few times a year.”

He snorts. “Really? Well, now you’ve done it. I’m leaking that to the press too.”

They walk along for a while longer, pausing at a fire basket to warm themselves and listen to a group of carolers. Then, they come to the end of the market and round a corner to another street, which is empty for the most part except for a few passersby. The snow has accumulated enough to cover the cars and bicycles lining the road. It feels like the temperature is dropping by the second, but he barely notices; he’d endure just about anything for another minute with him.

“What about you?” Jesse presses out of nowhere. “I told you my secret. Tell me yours.”

Rob pauses to think, then begins, “You want to know why I stood aside for party leader? I knew I’d hurt D66’s chances in the election with me at the helm. We needed a stronger leader. A more likable leader. And people don’t like me, not really.” He buries himself into his scarf like a turtle slinking back into its shell. The thought is painful and has never grown any less so over time. “I did want it, but Sigrid had the votes, and she was better for the job. She’s more experienced.”

“Experience isn’t everything,” he points out. “That’s what everyone said about me when I became party leader. They called me a snotty kid. I just decided not to listen.”

“I wish I had your ability to block out the noise.” Rob meets his eyes. “They compared me to you when I first became party leader.”

Jesse cracks a smile at that. “I remember.”

It seems now like it happened in another life. Both in their early thirties, the papers had observed. From Brabant. Neatly dressed and overly ambitious. They’ve always been similar in those aspects but markedly different in their approaches to governing, one pragmatic and the other dogmatic. Jesse fits more naturally in his party, Rob thinks, and he's perpetually pulled in two opposite directions, caught between adhering to his beliefs and compromising them in the interest of incremental change. There must be something to be said for that. Still, he wonders what it means, in the end, to compromise over and over and never truly stand for anything.

They have their chance for real change, now, and the chance to accomplish it together. He doesn’t know what the new year holds for the coalition or the country, and he knows it won’t be an easy road, but if anyone can do it, they can. He believes that as much as he’s ever believed anything.

They stroll the rest of the way in silence before Jesse stops in front of a building, and in his inebriated state, it takes Rob a moment to realize that it's his. They’d reached it faster than he expected, and he can’t ward off the disappointment that takes hold of him for the second time tonight.

“Are you coming up?” he asks as he turns to face him, overflowing with hope.

Jesse sends him an apologetic look. “I can’t. I have to get home.”

Home. His home. Again, he feels that rush of disappointment, one he can’t tamp down before it takes hold. He should have known better, but he doesn’t. He never seems to anymore.

They stand together without saying anything for a while. Jesse looks like a vision underneath the streetlights, curls damp from the melting snow, shoulders dusted with snowflakes, and cheeks glowing bright red from the cold. It may be the drink, but he swears he’s never looked more beautiful.

“Kiss me then, at least?” Rob breathes as he steps forward and tries not to sound as desperate as he feels.

It’s stupid; they both know that. Stupid and risky and a flagrant temptation of fate, but Jesse takes a look around and, upon finding the street empty, seizes his lips in a gentle kiss, hands still tucked into his coat pockets. He closes his eyes and loses himself in it, resisting the urge to pull him closer - or better yet, pull him upstairs into his bed and leave him with no choice other than to stay. He breathes in the smell of him, holding his oxygen captive in his lungs and refusing to let it go. 

He wants the way he looks tonight and the way he tastes burned into his brain to carry him through until January. It feels like ages from now. It’ll be a new year the next time he lays eyes on him, and he wonders, briefly, what it has in store for them, too.

“Merry Christmas,” Jesse says once he pulls away, giving him a wink and turning to go before he can find his voice to say it back.

As he watches him make his way down the street and vanish, swallowed up into the winter night, Rob is struck again by how badly he wants him to stay, how much it frustrates him that he can’t. The realization why comes as swift as a punch in the stomach.

Shit. This isn’t the way love is supposed to feel.

Chapter Text

One frigid February morning, he is running through his event invitations with his aide on his way to a meeting when she mentions one in particular that makes him perk up.

“Oh, and one last thing. You got invited to speak on a panel at a conference on climate change in Paris at the end of the month. They want you to talk about our new carbon emissions cap and balancing economic interests against emissions reduction. It looks like it’ll be with other lawmakers from the EU. They’ll provide your registration and hotel. The conference lasts three days if you want to attend the rest of it too.”

Tapping away on his phone as he is, Rob only glances over at her long enough to ask, “Anyone else from the Kamer going?”

“Uh, yes. Jesse Klaver from GreenLeft. They said in their email that they wanted to make sure they invited his ‘other half.’”

His heart shoots into his throat, but he’s grown adept since they started at not showing any sort of outward reaction to Jesse’s name when it comes up in conversation, so he doesn’t flinch, just continues striding down the hallway.

“Hilarious,” he deadpans. “I’ll do it. Can you book me a train?”

On the first day of the conference, he settles himself into a seat at a session on pollution abatement measures for the agricultural sector, and it isn’t long until he notices a familiar silhouette slip into the chair beside him out of the corner of his eye. They don’t greet each other or say anything at all, even though he can feel every hair on his body stand at attention, in the way they would right before a lightning strike. The hold Jesse has on him has never seemed to grow any weaker; if anything, over the past five months, it’s only strengthened its vice grip.

He pulls out his phone in an attempt to distract himself. Then, he sees movement in his peripheral vision again: Jesse shifting in his seat and withdrawing something from his suit jacket, then sliding it across the table toward him without a word.

A hotel room key card.

He feels his pulse quicken at the invitation, but it isn’t an invitation at all. His acceptance is a forgone conclusion. They both know it’s the reason he came here.

Without looking at him, he takes it and slides it into his pocket. 

-

The day drags on interminably, but their panel goes over well. They sit beside each other and laugh along with the crowd at a good-natured joke from the moderator, who introduces them as ‘the environmental lovebirds from the Netherlands.’ He can’t deny he gets a wicked thrill from it all, hiding in plain sight.

If only they knew.

They part ways after that, and at the end of the day, he makes his way to the hotel with his luggage, which is a brief walk from the convention center. It’s been a while since he was last in Paris, but he doesn’t so much as pause to take the city in, his eyes locked in tunnel vision and his entire body pulsing with one singular beat. He checks into his room at the front desk to avoid suspicion but goes straight to Jesse’s instead, swiping the keycard and pulling open the door.

The room is adequate, with a neatly-made king bed and a window that overlooks a street. There are blue velvet curtains on either side of that window that he knows will be necessary to draw soon enough. There’s a mirror placed directly opposite the bed as well, which seems like quite a French thing to do, and he makes a mental note to take advantage of that later too. It’s nothing grand, but it will serve their purpose just fine. 

As far as he’s concerned, it might as well be heaven on earth.

He hears the hissing of the shower in the bathroom, followed by Jesse’s voice calling out, “Who is it?”

He scoffs, taking a moment to situate himself and his luggage. 

“Are you expecting more than one person?” 

Jesse laughs at that, and he makes his way into the bathroom, shrugging off his jacket and almost automatically beginning to unbutton his shirt. They won’t need clothing while they’re here, he thinks. Not if he can help it. 

He comes to a stop on the other side of the shower curtain with a grin. “You better not be.”

“Never,” Jesse replies as he continues washing on the other side, unawares.

As soon as he’s nude, he peels back the curtain and steps in without warning. Within seconds he has him up against the tile wall, grabbing his hair and hauling him in for a voracious kiss. The press of his wet body has him hard in an instant, and Jesse makes a sound of surprise against his mouth when they collide but melts into the kiss quickly.

Rob moves his lips to his neck, then to that spot behind his ear that drives him mad and has him gripping his hips tight enough to leave marks behind. He kisses as if to consume him, and he wants to, God, more than anything he wants to; he wants to hold him inside and never let him go. He feels his cock begin to stir, and he presses his own against it, grinding forward and making both of them shudder. It’s a struggle to keep from dropping to his knees right there, but no. 

For once, they have time to go slow.

Rob pulls back just then and allows them a moment to catch their breath, exercising more restraint than he was aware he had. Jesse looks spellbound, pupils dilated so wide they eat up his irises and soaked strands of hair falling in his face. There are droplets of water dripping from the tip of his nose, beading on his cheeks. They’re both so used to rushing that slowing the pace feels unnatural, but he forces himself to breathe as he stands there, taking in the sight of his body, damp and gleaming, and his. 

All his. For days.

“Hello,” he finally settles on greeting him properly, not knowing what else to say, and Jesse chokes out a laugh.

“Well, you had me at hello. Before then, actually.”

He chuckles under his breath and leans in again, tilting his chin upward and kissing him gingerly this time, deep and unhurried. They don’t share as many intimate moments like this as he’d prefer; they never have time. Here, hundreds of kilometers away from their obligations and anyone who might recognize them, he can lose himself in him completely. For a moment, he does.

“I,” Rob says between kisses, “have been waiting for this for weeks.”

“I thought that damn conference would never end. I could barely pay attention during our panel.”

He gnaws on his lower lip to bite back a grin. “Really? What was on your mind?”

Jesse switches their positions, pushing his light body against the wall instead with no trouble at all. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, before he meets his eyes and curls his fingers around his cock with the express purpose of getting a reaction out of him. Rob feels so touch-starved that he doesn’t mind giving one, gasping softly and arcing forward into his fist.

“If you must know,” the other man admits, burying his face into his neck, “I spent all day thinking about being inside you. I watch you in debate and think about it. I dream about it.” He moans, and Jesse kisses the sound back into his mouth. “I’ve wanted it since the day you stepped into the chamber for the first time.”

He twists his wrist, pumping him gently, and Rob shivers. His desire to go slow, weak as it was to begin with, evaporates in an instant.

“Get on the bed,” Rob pants, although he can’t summon up much power to put behind the words. He tries to assume control of the situation, but it never seems to last long when he’s practically bleeding desire like this, and so he placates him with a soft, “Please.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice. Within seconds, Jesse has stepped out of the shower and pulled him out, too, toweling both of them off so they won’t soak the sheets. Once they’re in the bedroom, Rob unzips his suitcase and retrieves the bottle of lube he’d brought with him, but Jesse is upon him in seconds before he can make another move, backing him up onto the mattress and climbing atop him.

He knows they both get off on this. The power play. Dominance. Yet while he is loath to give up control, Jesse seems to revel in it, and so he switches their positions back without encountering any resistance, crawling onto his lap and letting his hands roam across every inch of naked skin as he charts his new territory. He feels free here, for the first time in years. Bolder with his body, too, less shacked by the conventions that rule their daily lives. He doesn’t have time for modesty.

When in Paris, do as Parisians do, he figures.

He rolls his hips, delving down against him in a way he knows will drive him mad with friction but not using his hands to touch him just yet. It achieves the desired effect when he hears his breath hitch in his throat.

“You’re a tease, you know that?” Jesse tilts his head back with a groan, and Rob is about to summon up something witty to say in response when he grabs hold of his hips all at once, yanking him down with an aggressiveness that surprises him. “Turn over.”

Well. It’s not like he’s going to say no.

He does as he says and positions himself on his hands and knees, watching in the mirror at the end of the bed as Jesse goes for the bottle of lube, squeezes a generous amount onto his fingers, then eyes him with a close, calculated look as if plotting something. He has no idea what that something might be - until he urges him forward, gets on his knees behind him, spreads him wide, and opens his mouth to lick him.

The sight almost overloads his circuitry, his senses misfiring and toes curling. He squeezes his eyes shut so hard he sees stars. He can’t bear to watch; he’ll lose control in seconds if he does, and he feels dangerously close already, even though they haven’t ventured beyond foreplay. The delicious slip and dart of his tongue against his hole make him thrum with want, and his head falls forward, a sound he doesn’t recognize leaving his lips. Jesse works him for only a minute or so as if sensing any more will drive him over the edge too soon, then replaces his tongue with his slick fingers, pressing them inside and opening him up. Readying him for more.

The sensation doesn’t drive him any less wild, and he tenses, rocking back against him as Jesse leans down to trail kisses along his back. He feels comfortingly solid behind him, level-headed and cool, although Rob can’t fathom how. He’s like a candle burning at both ends in comparison, as frenzied as a hurricane barreling toward the shore.

“Relax,” he coos the words against his skin. “Relax for me.”

Relax. He almost bursts out laughing. It’s like telling someone who is raving mad to calm down in the middle of an argument. It feels borderline fucking impossible, but he exhales a slow, meditative breath, working the tension out of his muscles as best as he can.

To think he ever imagined they could go slow tonight.

He is vaguely aware of Jesse crawling up toward the headboard and lying back against it, giving him free rein to straddle him. He feels almost too unsteady to manage but does so anyway; this is familiar for both of them, their preferred position, and he could probably do it blindfolded - which might be fun at a later time, actually. Rob forces himself to collect his wits and reaches for the bottle one last time, pressing lube into one palm and then smoothing it down over his cock.

The sense of control jolts him back. This is the natural order of things. Everything as it should be.

He locks his eyes with Jesse as he sinks onto him, then anchors his hands on his shoulders to steady himself as he begins to ride, allowing himself to acclimate to his size before picking up the pace. Now Jesse is the one who is lost, eyelids fluttering shut and his hands pawing frantically at his hips. His jaw is slack, eyes glazed over. Faintly, he can feel him trembling where they’re joined. It turns Rob on like nothing else, seeing the effect he has on him.

“You feel so good,” Jesse breathes, a thin, reedy sound from the back of his throat. “You have no idea how good you feel, fuck-”

“I do, actually,” he says as he flashes a smile. Jesse has proven to be a bit of a babbler at times during sex. He finds it endearing, more than anything, “since you keep telling me.”

Rob shifts until he finds the angle he wants and fucks down onto him harder, driving him against that spot that has him buck wild in hardly any time at all. He can feel his orgasm coiling in his stomach, building inexorably. The sounds Jesse is making beneath him only inch him closer: soft, breathless little gasps and quiet moans that drift across his skin like a melody. He looks astounded, completely awestruck. Overwhelmed by it all, Rob falters momentarily atop him, his rhythm breaking, and, always the opportunist, Jesse seizes on it to adjust their position slightly and thrust up into him instead. He has to brace his hands against the headboard to keep himself vertical as he hits him at precisely the right spot again, sending a blitz of pleasure through him that leaves him lightheaded.

Jesse, who still by some miracle appears to have some presence of mind, grips his sides to stabilize him.

“I got you,” he soothes, and Rob sucks in a sharp breath, almost choking on it.

He hasn’t felt this way before while riding him, so wide open, so full, so unbearably hot, like he would tear off his skin itself if it would cool him down. He can’t say what the difference is; the anticipation, maybe, that has been lurking in his bones all week in the lead up to their departure.

Whatever the reason, he allows Jesse to guide him off and back onto all fours, then drape his body over him from behind. He opens his eyes to watch in the mirror as Jesse fucks into him again, adjusting slightly before he finds that perfect angle once more. Rob moans something unintelligible, trying to tell him that he’s there, right there, but his mental faculties have all but abandoned him, and he can’t manage it. Still, the sound he makes must be indication enough because Jesse sets a punishing pace, practically drubbing him.

He’s close. So close. But not the way he is normally, not from being stroked or sucked; neither one of them has touched his cock at all. It’s deeper inside him, simmering and about to boil over. He tries to keep his head raised but fails at that too, awash in the sensation and balling the sheets up in his fists. Building, building, but never peaking. Like riding a continually cresting wave. He can feel himself shaking uncontrollably. He’s a puddle of nerve endings, twitching and battered by a storm.

“Don’t stop,” he chokes out. If he were lucid, he might care about how pitiful he sounds. “Don’t stop - fuck, right there, keep… oh, God-”

Ever disobedient, for once, thankfully, Jesse obeys. It doesn’t take long before he falls to pieces, muscles seizing and body locking up, the world catching fire behind his eyes as his climax surges through him. He assumes he’ll stop then, or maybe at least ease up, but he doesn’t. Instead, he fucks him through it, driving mercilessly against that spot inside him over and over until he’s begging: for more or for him to stop, Rob is no longer sure. It verges on overstimulation, simultaneously too much and not enough. 

He swears he leaves his body for a split second. He barely feels it when Jesse comes inside him with a shout, following him right over the cliff in the same way thunder follows lightning, so hot he can hardly stand it.

He remains there in silence for a while on his stomach afterward, his body tingling from aftershocks and skin prickling with a pins and needles sensation from head to toe. He can’t focus his eyes or catch his breath, and forming words is impossible, but he is pleasantly warm all over, drifting aimlessly in the stratosphere. Eventually, he hears rustling on the sheets beside him, followed by a hand gently stroking the span of his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Jesse pants, sounding genuinely worried. Rob is unresponsive at first, so he nudges him over onto his back. “Hey. Look at me.”

If he could laugh right then, he would. No, he isn’t okay.

He probably won’t ever be okay again after this. In more ways than one.

Rob doesn’t answer, nor does he look at him. He still can’t bring himself to do it, and so they lay there for a while in the stillness for seconds, or a minute, or ten. After a while, Jesse reaches over and takes his hand, caressing the space between his thumb and index finger, then pressing a feather-light kiss to his wrist. He finally manages a loopy smile at the feeling, letting it reel him back in.

If Jesse is a storm, he thinks, then this is the eye of it, the momentary quiet of the aftermath when he knows there’s still much more to come. All he can do is brace himself.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Jesse admits, finally, still looking shell-shocked. “Without being touched. I…”

He seems to want to say more but can’t find the right words. Rob wants to laugh all over again.

“Doesn’t happen often. Where the-” he begins, voice choked by the saliva in his throat. His cognitive function is still so limited he’s starting to worry it may have been fucked right out of him. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

Jesse has the gall to chuckle at him. “I told you I’m good at everything I do.”

“Are you trying to kill me?” he asks, only partially kidding. “I have a heart arrhythmia, you know.”

“I know,” Jesse confirms, maneuvering himself down to press a kiss to his sternum, where they can both feel his heart hammering away, steady and solid in spite of it all. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful with your heart.”

They lay there for a while longer with his head on his chest as Rob ponders the double meaning of that before eventually making their way up to the pillows and tucking themselves beneath the sheets. It feels like something in the earth has moved, he thinks as he takes in the sight of Jesse at his side, or maybe just something inside him. It feels as perilous as a tectonic shift. It’s unleashed something again, that increasingly insistent feeling he’s tried desperately to muzzle since it first reared its head in December.

He won’t dignify it with a name. He wouldn’t dare.

As if sensing that he needs a distraction, his stomach gurgles loudly right then, protesting the lack of food. Jesse notices at once.

“This is hungry work,” he comments, reaching over to the nightstand to search for a room service menu. “How about dinner, then we go again after?”

“And you thought you were the one who wouldn’t be able to keep up.” Rob tries to lift his head from the pillow but fails, feeling the ache of overexertion begin to take hold. “Maybe, in a bit. I might be too sore. That was a lot.”

Jesse gives him a disarming look of concern and drops what he’s doing to roll back over, folding himself in at his side. His brown eyes are soft and half-lidded in the fading twilight, peering at him closely as if afraid once more that he’s hurt him, somehow.

“Can I… do anything to help, or-”

“No. Just stay with me,” Rob tells him. Still, he looks troubled, and so he squeezes his forearm to reassure him. “You didn’t hurt me. I just know my limits, that’s all.”

The worry dissipates from his eyes at once. Jesse grins and retakes his hand, kissing it lightly, then turning it over and staring at it in silence for a while, rapt. It’s quite a dichotomy, the way he can go from fucking him into the mattress to this impossible tenderness. He struggles to wrap his brain around it sometimes.

“Thank you,” Jesse murmurs after a while, voice scraping his throat like sandpaper.

He means it, Rob can tell. He appreciates him letting him fuck him, respects the vulnerability of it all, knows the effort and trust it takes. It isn’t often that anyone is so grateful, and again, Rob can’t find the words to respond. In all honesty, he’s afraid of what he’ll say if he allows himself to, so he just gulps, throat dry, and nods at him.

“I’m not going back to the conference tomorrow, am I?” Jesse asks rhetorically as he settles down at his side again.

The words rouse something in him. All at once, Rob feels positively feral, seizing his lips with a possessive snarl and all but pinning him down where he lays.

“You’re not going back to the conference,” is all he says, putting the issue to rest. “You’re not leaving this fucking bed.”

-

They do end up ordering room service eventually, along with three bottles of red wine, which they eat and drink in bed together. Rob has to make a conscious effort to keep from checking the time on his phone now and then. It’s easy to forget that they have no hard stop tonight, no schedule to adhere to. No time limit. Not for days. They are insulated from the outside world here. Their lives back home no longer exist. They’re just two lovers in Paris, like interchangeable characters from a hundred old film noirs, nameless and faceless and free. He never would’ve imagined how privileged he feels to be nobody, for once in his life.

“What’s your take on Rutte?” Jesse wonders aloud as he refills their wine glasses, and Rob blinks.

“My take on Rutte?”

“Yes. There’s been speculation about his sexuality for years. What’s your expert opinion?”

“I prefer not to think of Mark Rutte as a sexual being, thank you very much. But-” He sets his glass on the nightstand with a sigh. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing surprises me anymore. I do think Thierry has always had a bit of a crush on me, though. Do with that what you will.”

Jesse laughs, but the smile plummets from his face when they hear a faint buzzing on the nightstand: his phone lighting up with an incoming call. Rob assumes he’ll ignore it, but he takes hold of the device almost immediately, paling.

“It’s my wife,” he mutters, shattering their illusion at once. “I’ll be back.”

Rob goes as still as death when the words meet his ears. He watches him go without a sound as Jesse tugs on his clothing as best he can, then heads for the door. He answers the phone right as he swings it shut behind him, and Rob listens to the sound of his footsteps as they recede down the hallway, away from him.

For a while, all he can do is sit there numbly, too shocked to move a muscle. Stupid. He’s stupid, he realizes, his cheeks burning. He’d been playing pretend, imagining that they are isolated from the outside world here, that just for a few days, they could be like any normal lovers. They aren’t normal lovers. They aren’t even normal people. They both belong to their significant others. They belong to their country, the media, the thousands who speculate on their personal lives and make unfounded assumptions about their motivations. They’ll never be free from it, no matter where they go.

The hotel room feels too small, suddenly, as if the walls are closing in. The brush of the sheets chafes his skin, and the scent of their sex turns his stomach.

A filthy secret. Shameful secret. That’s all he is to him. He’s felt this way before with closeted men, and he vowed once never to feel it again. He’d been an idiot to think things were different with Jesse, somehow. Their fantasy comes caving in around him all at once like a house of cards, and he rises to stand, pulling on his slacks, then his shirt.

Jesse steps back inside right as he finishes doing the top button on his shirt, still just as disheveled and half-dressed. Initially, all he does is blink before approaching him with an exasperated sigh.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Rob says, voice cold, as he smooths out his shirt cuffs.

Jesse gives him a look of irritated condescension as if speaking to a child. “Why?”

“You’re married,” he states. He feels like crying, in all honesty, but does his best to keep the hurt from seeping into his tone. He slips his arms into his jacket and puts on his glasses, then immediately yanks them off because he’d only worn them for him, not because they serve any real purpose, and he hates himself for that, too. “That’s why.”

Jesse appears caught between being frustrated and apologetic, unable to decide which to settle on. Finally, he exhales sharply and seems to elect the former.

“Are you mad that I answered? What do you want me to do?” he snaps. “She’s my wife. She’s the mother of my children. I have…” He trails off, sinking heavily onto the corner of the bed and running a hand over his mouth. “I have so much to lose.”

“And I don’t?”

“It’s not the same, Rob. You know it isn’t.”

He may as well have slapped him. For a long moment, all he can do is stand there and blink, reeling from the slight. Jesse can tell at once he’s made a mistake but doesn’t seem to know what to say to fix it, and they both know full well he can’t take it back. These truths were always there, Rob realizes, hideous and ugly and lurking just beneath the surface. Festering like an abscess. For months, they’ve avoided them. 

Sooner or later, they were going to have to be brought out into the open.

“You know what?” he bites out, throat tightening. He refuses to let him see him cry. He refuses to let anyone make him feel so small or make everything he’s laid on the line seem so insignificant, either. “You’re right. It’s not worth risking it all for me. I should go.”

He heads for the door, but before he can open it, Jesse has crossed the room too and pressed his palm against the wood to hold it shut.

“Don’t,” he bursts out. “I’m sorry, I-” He cuts himself off, clamoring to find the right words. “It just scares me, sometimes. This. You.”

His resolve, which was never that strong to begin with, weakens. He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to waste the next two days apart from him when they could be together. They may never get this much time alone again, but there’s a reason for that, he reminds himself. They’re not meant to be. They can never be together in any meaningful way. What is the point of this, really? Fumbling their way toward a quick come when they can find a few moments, stealing kisses and touches behind closed doors? It isn’t some grand love story. It’s a mistake, at best, and mutually-assured destruction at worst. It can only end in pain.

But he can’t leave. He’s always prided himself on being logical. Reasonable. Pragmatic. He knows all this, and even so, he can’t bring himself to leave.

Still facing the door, Rob lets out a breath and bows his head. “What are we doing?”

A moment of silence hangs over them like a cloud as the question goes unanswered. Jesse sighs too, still leaning forward against the door but relaxing slightly.

“I don’t know,” Jesse murmurs. “But I can’t stop. I… I don’t want to stop.”

“We should. It’d be better for both of us. You know it would.”

“I know,” he affirms shakily.

All at once, Rob feels like screaming, cursing whatever sadistic higher power brought them together in this life, where they can’t have what they want. He wishes more than anything that there was an antidote for this. A cure. Some kind of pill he could take to put himself out of his misery. All he seems to do is think about him. No matter where he is or who he’s with, Jesse always lingers somewhere in the back of his mind, trailing him like his shadow. Jesse has never said the same to him outright, but he doesn’t need to; he knows that he feels the same.

Behind him, Jesse lets his head fall forward onto the back of his neck. It feels so heavy, weighed down with guilt, but then his hands come to rest on his hips, and he can feel the hope in them, the wordless urging to stay.

“Come back to bed,” Jesse whispers, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. “Please.”

He does.

Rob realizes, as he goes, that he was never going to do anything else.

-

On their last night, they manage to pull themselves out of bed long enough to make their way to the Eiffel Tower. They bring their last bottle of wine and drink it on the lawn of the Champ de Mars, watching as the tower looms over them, a golden bulwark against the starry night. It’s freezing, and so they sit close together, bundled in coats and scarves as they ward off the chill with red wine and body heat. They split a cigarette, too, an old habit he’s never entirely been able to kick, though one he’s relied on less and less since they started. He saves it now for special occasions, and he figures this is as special as they’ll ever get.

For a while, they don’t say much to each other. Then, finally, Rob stubs out the cigarette, takes a swig straight from the bottle, and sighs.

“We could never go back,” he fantasizes, well aware that he’s living in a dream, but he can’t help himself. “We could stay here. Run away from it all. Start new lives, change our names. You could teach political science at the Sorbonne. I could open a cafe in the Latin Quarter.”

Jesse pretends to consider it. “We don’t speak French.”

“We could learn.”

A moment passes in silence. Jesse reaches over, resting his hand on his thigh and squeezing lightly. They’re shrouded by darkness here, made anonymous by it. For a few more hours at least, no one knows who they are. This little freedom, small as it may be, feels monumental.

“We can’t,” Jesse tells him. “You know we can’t.”

It doesn’t need to be said, but maybe it’s better for him to hear. He glances sideways at him, watching his hair shift in the breeze and admiring the slope of his aquiline nose, the graceful curve of his lips, the angles of his jawline. Rob wonders if he’s grown too accustomed to being with him over the last few days. First, Jesse was an indulgence, then a habit. Now, he’s afraid he’s become more of an addiction.

But, he thinks, he’ll worry about that in the morning.

“I know,” he acknowledges softly, passing him the bottle.

Jesse takes a long, slow drink. Above them, the tower lights up and shimmers in the way it does every hour on the hour, as reliable as clockwork. In the same way, Rob thinks, they’ll always be drawn back together one way or another. They’ll always end up here.

“But,” Jesse says, meeting his eyes and raising the bottle as if in a toast, “at least we’ll always have Paris.”

Chapter Text

Three months into its term, the coalition almost implodes.

It begins, as most crises seem to, with a classic Mark Rutte memory lapse. A cabinet minister is accused of being complicit in a large-scale embezzlement scheme masterminded by someone in the State Attorney’s office and subsequently resigns. Rutte, in typical Rutte fashion, denies ever having been warned of any suspicions against the minister, which is found to be false by an inquiry that follows.   

Once, Rob remembers Jesse jokingly calling the man the ‘Rutte of all evil.’ As the scandal breaks in the press and the coalition dissolves into mayhem, he can’t help but think how right he was.

The damage is less about the scandal itself and more about the old wounds it reopens among coalition partners, culminating in somewhat of a battle royale between party leaders and their deputies in a conference room a few days later. Rob mostly stays out of the fray but watches the bullets whizz by from his seat at the table with a sick feeling in his stomach. Jesse remains calm at first, his silence like a loaded gun, before losing his cool half an hour in and shooting to his feet across the table from Rutte just as the other man finishes denying everything once more.

“You know what, this is insulting,” he fumes, upper lip curled into a sneer. He never yells, never speaks overly loudly in confrontation at all, but the intensity of his stare alone makes Rob shift in his seat. “Do you honestly think we’re all naive? If your memory is as bad as it seems to be, I recommend seeing a doctor. First the benefits scandal, then Omtzigt. Now, this. My party isn’t going to support someone who lies over and over as if he just assumes he’ll get away with it-”

“So what, Mr. Klaver?” Rutte replies calmly, as made of Teflon as ever. He doesn’t rise along with him, and the lack of respect isn’t lost on Rob. “You’ll withdraw GreenLeft’s support over this? If that’s the case, then I don’t believe I’m the naive one here.”

Sigrid, always the mediator, tries to step in, but Rob can tell even she is more frantic than usual. D66 has been placed in a peacekeeper role since the coalition’s inception, running interference between the left-wing and right-wing parties they had united, and it’s beginning to weigh on both of them.

“Look, emotions are high right now. Acting impulsively is always a mistake. Let’s adjourn and come back tomorrow. We all want this coalition to work-”

“Do we?” Jesse cuts in. “If we want this coalition to work, we need him to step down. Our country needs stability, competent leadership, and it isn’t getting it with him in charge-”

“Oh, and then what?” Wopke Hoekstra chimes in from the corner, where he’s largely spent the past half hour spectating. He looks amused by Jesse, more than anything. “We clear the way for you to be prime minister? We all know it’s what you want. If you withdraw your support over this, you’ll make it clear to the country that you’re nothing more than a petulant child who throws his toys when he doesn’t get his way. Although I think everyone here knew that already.”

The room devolves into an unintelligible rabble after that, before people begin to storm out and peel off. Jesse is among them, and Rob watches him go but doesn’t follow at first, remaining by Sigrid’s side as Rutte approaches her with a baleful glare. He doesn’t hear everything he says, only managing to catch his last words as he begins to step away.

“You’re the one who strongarmed us into bringing them in,” he hisses under his breath. To her credit, Sigrid remains perfectly stoic, with her chin raised and eyes pointed straight ahead. “Fix it.”

Rob doesn’t have to ask to know that this means he’ll need to fix it. One look at Sigrid confirms his suspicions, and once she nods, he sets off in the direction of Jesse’s office, as much the loyal soldier as ever. He is almost too exhausted to feel anxious, beaten down by days of internal squabbles and hounding by the press. The bags under his eyes hang as dark as shadows. If he stops moving for a single second, he thinks he might fall asleep on his feet. He isn’t sure he’ll survive another formation if it comes to that, but he casts those thoughts aside as he comes to a stop in Jesse’s doorway, knocking on the frame to alert him of his presence.

Seated on his sofa with his head in one hand, Jesse glances up at the sound. His expression darkens at once.

“No,” he says before Rob can even open his mouth. “Not now. I don’t want to talk to you.”

That takes him aback, and he can’t deny the hurt that blooms in his chest like a bruise. Sometimes, on days like this, the lines between work and play grow so blurry that it’s difficult to remove personal feelings from a professional disagreement. Jesse must notice him flinch because he releases a breath, his shoulders sagging under the weight of it.

“I - look, I am very happy to see you,” Jesse backpedals. “But if this is about work, which I assume it is, it’s not a good time.”

Rob ignores that and closes the door behind him, taking a seat on the arm of the sofa facing him with his feet planted on the cushion.

“You can’t withdraw GreenLeft’s support over this,” he tells him bluntly. “It’s short-sighted and stupid. Do you think any of us really like working with Rutte? No, but we do it because we have to.”

“Well, I realize that membership in D66 requires surgical removal of the spine,” Jesse spits back at him, “but that’s not the case for us.”

“Don’t take this out on me. You need to get used to the fact that you’re not an opposition party anymore. Not everything has to be a battle.” He pauses to see if his words appear to be getting through to him, but they seem to hit and bounce right off. “Do I need to remind you that you’re the architect of this coalition? You agreed to it knowing you’d have to work with Rutte. Now it’s become a Frankenstein’s monster you can’t control and-”

“Rutte has never faced consequences for the benefits scandal,” Jesse counters and makes his way over to the desk. “Not a single one. Thousands of families went into debt and lost their homes, and he continues on like none of it ever happened. This is the last straw, Rob. Either he’s out, or we’re out.”

Undaunted, Rob walks right up to him, so close he can feel each angry breath he exhales. This might as well be his second job, wrangling Jesse into compliance with the rest of the coalition. God knows he spends enough time doing it.

“You promised me that you’d negotiate-”

“I promised I’d negotiate,” he retorts. “I didn’t promise I’d lay down and let you use us as a doormat.”

Rob inches closer, raising his chin defiantly and locking eyes with him. He points at him as he speaks, pressing the accusatory finger into his chest and shuffling him backward until his legs are pushed up against the side of his desk.

“I laid everything on the line so GreenLeft could join the coalition. You are not withdrawing support now and throwing it all away. And if you do, then I guess what they say about you is true: that you’re an idealist who doesn’t know how to govern, and you’ll never be prime minister.”

That strikes a chord with Jesse, but it wasn’t unintentional. Rob knew it would. They both know precisely the right buttons to push to hurt each other the most, to turn each other on, and this does; neither of them can deny it. He can see the flush on Jesse’s cheeks, and he catches his eyes flick down to look at his lips, giving him away in an instant. Jesse has never been frightening when he’s angry, not really. Rob knows it’s mostly just for show, the equivalent of a kitten puffing itself up to intimidate a perceived threat. He couldn’t hurt a fly.

Before he can get another word in, Jesse is upon him. He backs him up against the office door and thankfully has the foresight to lock it because Rob’s mind goes blank the instant their lips collide. His kiss is punishing, so domineering he hardly has a chance to respond at all; he can only part his lips and take him in. After a moment, Jesse bites down on his lower lip - not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to ache - and the pain only spurs Rob on.

“Fuck you,” Jesse seethes against his mouth.

Rob’s lips curl halfway into a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Sometime later, as they’re both putting themselves back in order, he pauses to look over at Jesse, who has seated himself on the sofa to lace up his shoes. The sun sunk below the horizon a quarter of an hour ago, bathing the office in near darkness. The fire has gone out of both of them along with it, and so Rob adjusts his approach as he slips on his suit jacket, doing away with the post-coital afterglow at once.

“You can’t drop out of the coalition,” he tells him again as he glances around, trying to track down his discarded tie.

Although his fury has been tempered significantly, Jesse remains noncommittal, and he continues tying his shoe without looking up. 

“I'm aware of your position, thank you.”

He gives him a look. “Jesse-”

“What, do you really think I’ll be so easily swayed? If we stay silent, we look complicit. It’s about time someone finally held that man accountable for his actions. You should be encouraging me to stand up for what’s right.”

“My loyalty is to D66 first,” he answers a bit too quickly.

Jesse seems skeptical. “Is it?”

Rob doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to think too hard about that, in all honesty. He just abandons his quest for his tie and walks back over to him. Still, he won’t make eye contact, so he resorts to sinking onto his knees in front of him, forcing him to do so. Only then does Jesse give up tying his shoes with a sigh and fall back against the cushions, wrung-out and delightfully unmade as he always is after sex. Rob can tell the irony of their positioning isn’t lost on either of them, but he doesn’t remark on it.

“What you do no longer just affects GreenLeft,” he urges. “It affects D66. It affects me. You wanted to have the chance to make a difference, and you do. Don’t throw it away because of Rutte. He isn’t worth it.” Jesse starts to open his mouth to object, but Rob continues, placing a hand on his knee. “You made me a promise.”

Neither of them says anything for what feels like an eternity. He is breathtaking like this, Rob can’t help but think. Hair a wild, unkempt mess, shirt half-open, loose-limbed and drowsy because of him. All he wants to do is stare. He loves his passion and fighting spirit, as much as it might frustrate him sometimes.

Finally, Jesse’s demeanor mellows. “This isn’t fair. How am I supposed to say no to you like this?”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Rob replies with a wink as he gets to his feet.

“Mm,” Jesse hums, then furrows his brow. “Who said anything about love?”

Dammit. He’d given himself away without meaning to. That seems to be his specialty as of late. However, there is a look in Jesse’s eyes that isn’t panic or aversion to the idea. Receptiveness, rather. He prods him gently with the question like he’s urging him to continue.

Rob looks down and smooths out his shirt cuffs with a gulp. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“That it is.” Jesse pauses as if that gives him something to mull over, then stands too and begins to collect his things. “I’ll think about it. Not withdrawing support. I have to say, you deserve some kind of award. You’ve done more to keep this coalition together than anyone.”

He has never thought of it that way, but he realizes he’s right. There are many things the coalition hinges on, and cooperation between their parties is one of them. This thing, whatever they have, is the only lynchpin keeping everything from falling apart sometimes. He has no way of knowing if they’ll ultimately succeed; more than likely, something will go wrong someday, in a way that no one can repair. All the analysts and talking heads predicted it the day they signed the agreement.

Until that day, they’re together in this, for better or for worse.

“Think about it, and make the right decision,” Rob tells him and pecks him on the lips as he turns to go. “Good night.”

-

Once sharks smell blood in the water, they begin to circle. 

Over the years, Rob has learned that holds true for the Kamer as well. As soon as the opposition parties and the press get wind of discord in the coalition, they descend like vultures. The opposition calls for a motion of no confidence in Rutte. Leftist parties and organizations put pressure on GreenLeft and Labour to withdraw support. He can’t so much as walk across the courtyard in the Binnenhof without reporters chasing him down and shoving their microphones in his face for a comment. 

Everyone in the dysfunctional microcosm of the world that is The Hague is locked in a holding pattern, waiting to hear what they plan to do - himself included.

Rob pays the price of several sleepless nights over it but compensates with a metric ton of caffeine and cigarettes, falling back into the habit like he always does whenever he’s wound tight enough to snap. He makes a half-hearted attempt to nourish his body in the middle of the week with a salad in the Kamer’s cafeteria, tucking himself away into one of the half-booths and stabbing at it rather aggressively with his fork to take out his frustrations. It’s bland and flavorless, but he forces himself to choke it down anyway. 

He’s in the middle of doing so when he looks up to find a figure standing over his table. 

“What did that salad do to you?” Jesse asks, with his own salad in one hand and a raised eyebrow.

He has no idea how he’d found him; he came here for the express purpose of not being found by anyone, but Jesse seems to have an uncanny ability to locate him regardless. Under normal circumstances, he’d be glad to see him, but his nerves are so overwrought and these circumstances so far from normal that all Rob does is stare back with a frown. Anyone else would take it as a sign to leave him be, but Jesse just plops himself down in the chair across from him anyway, beginning to eat.

Out of habit, Rob takes a sweep of the room to see if anyone is paying attention to them. The coast appears to be clear, and finally, he looks back at him.

“It threatened to withdraw support from the coalition,” he jokes, uttering the words a bit too dryly for them to come across as humorous. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not allowed to have lunch with my friend?”

Friend. That word is so far from accurate now that he can’t help but snort.

“If you were my friend, you’d tell me what you’re going to do. Waiting is driving everyone crazy. Or are you just enjoying making us sweat?”

“Maybe,” Jesse admits in between bites. “But I don’t want to talk about work. I’m on my lunch.”

“Well,” he mutters, “at least buy me dinner before you fuck me. And I don’t mean that literally.”

Jesse chuckles. “That can be arranged.”

“Hoekstra was right, you know. You’ll look childish if you pull out.”

“I do agree that pulling out is childish,” Jesse deflects with a joke, then gestures to his food. “What part of ‘I’m on my lunch’ was unclear to you?”

Rob tries his best, but as usual, he can’t find it in himself to stay mad at him for long. He thaws a bit despite himself, and eventually, they fall into an easy conversation about the debates of the previous day, mocking their colleagues and snickering into their salads like schoolchildren. Jesse succeeds in drawing the first genuine smile from him in days, and he can feel himself relaxing as the minutes tick by - that is, until he looks across the cafeteria and finds Sigrid watching them.

She’s walking with a group of aides, clearly on her way somewhere. He sometimes swears that there must be ten of her roaming around the Binnenhof, running surveillance. Their eyes don’t meet for long, but it’s long enough for her to come to some sort of conclusion; he can see it flicker in her eyes before she vanishes just as quickly as she’d come. It snaps Rob back to reality, and he straightens his spine, cutting off any warmth between them.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he tells him.

Jesse furrows his brow. “Doing what?”

“This. Being seen together.” He glances around, paranoid now that everyone is watching them, though he knows most of the people here are lost in their own miseries du jour and couldn’t care less. “It’s stupid. It’s-”

“Aw, this is adorable. Are you two on a date? Could’ve picked a more romantic setting, I have to say.”

A deep voice booms next to them. This time, the figure in his periphery is Thierry Baudet, holding his own lunch and a cup of coffee with that ever-present smarmy grin on his face and the bravado only an oversized man-child can possess. They both give him a look, and for once, he chooses not to remain ignorant.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes, actual-” Rob begins, at the same time as Jesse tells him, “No, by all means. Have a seat.”

Rob glares at Jesse, who moves his lunch to the side to make room for him. Usually, he wouldn’t mind chatting with Thierry - he’s amusing enough when he’s in the right mood - but he’s already at his wits’ end and isn’t sure how much stupidity he’s capable of tolerating at the moment.

“So,” Thierry begins, wriggling his eyebrows as he opens his lunch, “when’s the wedding? I’m assuming I’ll get an invite.”

Rob cringes inwardly. Almost no one has been more insufferable since they went viral together last year, and while most others have let the joke go by now, for some reason, Thierry continues to have a peculiar fascination with it. Rob would wonder what that says about him if he weren’t in such a shit mood already.

Instead, he just rolls his eyes so hard his corneas nearly detach and continues impaling his salad. Jesse, thankfully, steps into the line of fire for him.

“A bold assumption,” he replies, rolling with the joke. “We’re thinking small ceremony, only family. No one from work. Right, Rob?”

He shoots Jesse another withering glare. Beside them, Thierry looks offended by the hypothetical snub.

“Your loss then. My dance moves at weddings are legendary, to say the least.” He leans back with a sigh. “But in all seriousness, you’ve imagined what it would be like, right, Jetten? I mean, every woman in the Kamer has. Even I have to admit you’re a handsome man, Klaver.”

Jesse opens his mouth, but Rob cuts in, “Are you saying I’m the equivalent of a woman in your eyes?”

“Oh, come on. Lighten up. And don’t get all politically correct on me. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

He slams his fork down on the table at that, giving him a dangerous look, and Jesse flinches. Thierry, for his part, is unabashed, though Rob can tell other people in the cafeteria are starting to stare at the burgeoning standoff.

“You wouldn’t ask any other man here that kind of question. Only me,” he bites out and begins to gather his things. “Take your casual homophobia somewhere else.”

He rises to stand, and so does Thierry, as oafish as ever. “Now wait, I was just-”

“Fuck off, Thierry.”

He leaves him with that, tossing his lunch in the garbage nearby, then making his way toward the exit. This is far from new behavior from Thierry. He does it semi-regularly to get a reaction out of him, and he usually doesn’t rise to the bait, but his patience is worn so thin he can’t help it.

“What crawled up his ass?” he hears Thierry ask Jesse behind him, but if Jesse answers, he can’t make it out.

He makes it outside the nearby exit doors to the smoking bin before he hears footsteps scurrying after him, followed by Jesse’s voice calling out: “Rob, wait.”

He turns to find him quickening his pace to catch up with him. Rob clenches his jaw, withdrawing a cigarette from the pack he’s run through alarmingly quickly today and fumbling with his misbehaving lighter until it ignites. The nicotine strokes through his bloodstream like a feather once he inhales, setting him at ease for a few precious seconds. Jesse gives him an apologetic look once he comes to a stop in front of him, lips pressed into a grim line.

“I’m late for a meeting,” Rob tells him before he can open his mouth.

He can only assume he is. Soon some frantic staffer will come searching for him, rounding him up like a patient with dementia and herding him back to where he needs to be. His time is never his own, not really. It grates on his nerves more with each passing day.

“If you have enough time to smoke, you have time to talk to me,” Jesse retorts, then gives him a disappointed look. “I thought you stopped.”

“Conditionally,” he snaps, placing one hand on his hip and holding out the cigarette with the other to flick off the ashes. “You don’t get to do that, you know. Cause my stress and then belittle me for coping with it.”

Jesse sighs, backing off. “Why did you let him get under your skin like that? Talk to me.”

Rob stands in silence for a while, finishing only part of the cigarette before grinding it out underfoot with a scowl. It isn’t helping, not really. It’s just killing him, although stress or his heart or a combination of both will probably succeed in doing that, first.

“Fine. If you want to talk, talk about the coalition,” he barks, rounding on him all at once. “Stop playing coy with me. We don’t do that to each other. Not about something this important.”

Jesse glances around nervously to ensure no one is watching them, then begins.

“Our youth wing and our fraction in the Senate both want us to withdraw support,” he hisses under his breath. “The opinion polls are terrible. It might be better for us to sever any ties with Rutte and cut our losses now. You know what happens to left-wing parties that shore up right-wing coalitions. One wrong move and they hemorrhage seats in the election.”

His throat tightens. “Where is Labour?”

“Lilianne could go either way. I think she’s leaning toward withdrawing too.”

“Shit,” he curses, running a hand through his hair. It’s worse than he’d thought, then.

“I know. I’m sorry. But I have to do what my party wants, Rob. You know that better than anyone.”

Deep down, he knows he’s right - or he should be, at least. Loyalty to their parties will always come before their loyalty to each other, no matter how much it might hurt, but Rob realizes that it doesn’t for him anymore. It hasn’t since the leak, perhaps even before. He’d put him first then, and suddenly a feeling of something like betrayal washes through him when he realizes that he won’t do the same now that the chips are down.

Jesse turns to go, apparently having nothing more to say, but he reaches out at the last second and catches him by the lapel of his blazer.

“Don’t. After everything we worked for,” he breathes, the words somewhere between an order and a plea. “For me. Please.”

It seems to catch Jesse off guard, and for a moment, his mouth moves without articulating any words.

Finally, he tilts his head to one side as if torn. “You can’t play that card.”

“Why not? You played it once. You told me to trust you. I did.” He steps in closer. “I risked my position in D66. I risked our gains in the election. I trusted you.”

There’s a flicker of something in Jesse’s eyes, some deep, internal fracture working its way through him, but he gives no other indication of it and instead just turns again to leave.

“I have to go,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

-

The next evening arrives, and with it comes Jesse once more, who shows up to his office at eight o’clock, an hour after all the staff and the majority of other MPs have vacated the building. They often meet around this time, hidden away in one of their offices or his flat, depending on their schedules. It’s a familiar enough routine by now, but Jesse doesn’t look as eager as usual when he steps inside. In fact, he looks just as tired as Rob is, haggard and sleep-deprived, holding his suit jacket over one shoulder and a folder in his hand. Clearly, the conflict is wearing on him too, though he hadn’t known just how much until now.

“Before you ask,” Jesse says as soon as he steps in the door, “we aren’t discussing the coalition. I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a pen than talk about it anymore today.”

Normally, he would push back on that, buzzing with anxiety as he is, but there’s something about the way he carries himself and the look in his bloodshot eyes that gives him pause. He knows their last conversation is still weighing on Jesse, as much as it weighs on him, too, but this thing between them has always been an escape. 

For once, he allows it to be just that.

“Fine,” Rob gives in, making his way over to where he stands near the door. “Should we head back to mine, or do you want to do it here?”

“I need your thoughts on something, actually.”

He holds out a manila folder, which Rob takes with a furrowed brow. He flips it open and reads a few words before glancing back up at him. 

“You look tired,” he observes.

That draws a rueful smile out of Jesse, who saunters over to his couch and takes the liberty of sprawling out on it. “So do you.”

“I’m always tired,” Rob mutters, intending it as a throwaway comment, but Jesse picks up on it, he can tell. He skims the first page again, then holds the folder up. “What is this?”

“Ideas for the new green infrastructure proposal. I wanted to get your eyes on it before anyone else's.”

A grin works its way onto his lips. “I’m sorry, did I confuse this with a work meeting?”

“We never were able to separate work and play,” Jesse quips, folding his hands behind his head. “Why start now?”

Rob looks over the cover page again and scoffs.

“‘The Green New Deal’? A bit American, don’t you think?”

Jesse gives him a cheeky grin. “It’s my working title.”

The energy between them is electric, productive in a way that feels like a drug to Rob’s inner workaholic. Their professional relationship has only improved since GreenLeft joined the coalition, and he values his input more than almost anyone else’s. He sees things Rob doesn’t, thinks of the connotations of even the tiniest turns of phrase. It comes with the experience he has that Rob lacks, though he’d sooner die than admit that to him.

“Well, as long as we’re working,” Rob begins, walking over to his desk and picking up a stack of papers there, which he holds out to Jesse in return, “I’m giving a speech at an event next week on our nitrogen reduction measures. I have a draft, but it needs work. Can you look it over?”

They wind up working together well into the night, with Jesse stretched out on his sofa and Rob seated on the floor beside him in between the sofa and coffee table, cloaked in the familiar orange-gold lamplight. It wasn’t what he was expecting to happen, but it’s a much-needed distraction from the chaos in the coalition around them, a retreat into their own world. They’re just as effective a team as he’d imagined they would be. Their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. He encourages Jesse to pay attention to the details, and Jesse gets him to grasp the bigger picture, not get so bogged down in minutia.

They flow together as easily as water, inhabiting each other’s headspace. They learn from each other. Balance each other out; the pragmatist and the idealist. They make each other better, and he values that more than he can ever say.

After a few hours, he is on his second re-read of Jesse’s proposal, and Jesse has finished his markup of his speech. They’ve both shucked their suit jackets as well as their ties, sitting only in shirtsleeves and slacks. Eventually, he catches Jesse watching him out of the corner of his eye where he lays, one arm still tucked behind his head. His face is half thrown into shadow, but that ever-present tenderness in his gaze cuts through the darkness, a distant smile playing at his lips.

Rob does his best to ignore it at first, then gives up after a few minutes and pretends to be exasperated. 

“What?”

A moment of silence passes. Jesse doesn’t look away or reply. Rob can feel his gaze all over him, igniting his skin, but it isn’t a raging, furious burn now like it was when they started; it is slow and sweet like a coal-seam fire kindled in his veins, dangerous in its own right.

“I won’t withdraw support from the coalition,” he tells him at last. “I’ll speak with Lilianne, make sure Labour doesn’t either.”

Rob releases the breath he feels like he’s been holding for days and reaches over with a look of gratitude, pressing a chaste kiss to his knuckles. 

“What made you reconsider?” he asks after a moment.

Once more, Jesse doesn’t answer. Then again, he doesn’t need to. Rob already knows what the answer is, and so he keeps hold of his hand, kissing it again, then kissing the inside of his wrist and sewing their fingers together in the space between them.

They don’t say anything else after that. Every glance and touch they exchange say more than words could anyway. Jesse reaches over and brushes a stray piece of his hair back in a way that makes his heart stutter. The sound of his breathing and the look in his eyes pull him in like the moon pulls the tide. He doesn’t fight it. He can’t any longer.

He never knew losing control could happen so quietly.

Chapter Text

For a while, they’re happy, at least in their own way.

He doesn’t know if it can ever be true happiness when he can’t hold his hand while walking down the street, or kiss him good night on the train, or wake up next to him in the morning, but Rob thinks sometimes that neither one of them is made for that sort of happiness anyway. Their happiness is relegated to stolen moments between meetings and furtive glances in the chamber. It isn’t enough, but he knows it will have to be. 

The pragmatist inside him tries to make peace with it. The fool inside him just yearns for more. 

March bleeds into April and April into May, and he feels himself fall a little deeper with each one. He tries to retreat and bury himself in work, falling back on an old defense mechanism, which isn’t difficult to do. Against all odds, the cabinet weathers the Rutte scandal and continues on. His life is an unending barrage of coalition meetings, plenary sessions, speaking engagements, rope lines, and campaign events. The pace ebbs and flows but is more or less constant. It invigorates Rob as much as it exhausts him.

Overwhelmed by it all, he hides away one evening in the parliament’s old library to work and catch up on emails he’s been neglecting for days. It’s his favorite place in the Binnenhof, tucked away from the chaos outside and accessible only by MPs or staff. Most never bother making their way there, but he goes whenever he needs to center himself or remember why he’s here.

He’s always taken aback when he steps inside, dwarfed at once by the four stories of bookshelves housing old parliamentary records. An ornate glass skylight illuminates the room during the daytime, but now the only brightness comes from the lights suspended over the shelves, reflecting off the golden spines of the transcripts. The spiral staircase and balustrades of the walkways are red cast iron, wrought in intricate patterns. It smells of leather from the book bindings, of dust and history. It’s the one place that has never lost its magic to him, no matter how many times he’s stepped inside.

He closes his eyes for a moment and lets it wash over him, then gets to work. 

Switching off his phone, he sits at one of the tables on the ground floor for a while, typing up a few emails and refining talking points for a press conference later in the week, even though they’ve already been proofread, edited, and rehearsed within an inch of their life. D66’s comms team has looked them over, and so have about a dozen other people, but he lives in eternal fear that they could somehow be better. More eloquent. More concise. 

After an hour or so, he hears what sounds like a door slamming followed by footsteps, but engrossed as he is, he doesn’t look up. Some parts of the Binnenhof are so ancient it wouldn’t surprise him if they were haunted by former members of parliament, residual energy returning to their old stomping grounds in death. It’s only when he hears the sound of a throat clearing that he snaps out of it. He glances up in the direction of the sound and finds Jesse leaning over the railing one story above, looking down as if he’s been watching him for a while already. He’s as disheveled as he always is at the end of a long day, tie crooked and grey suit wrinkled.

His appearance startles him, and he jumps. “Oh. Hi. What’re you doing here?”

“I thought we were still on for tonight,” Jesse replies, checking the time on his watch. “I tried calling. But you weren’t answering, and you weren’t in your office, so I figured you were here.”

His ability to deduce his location so quickly is mildly unnerving, but Rob smiles nonetheless. After a second, he looks down at his own watch and blinks, feeling eyestrain begin to form like a knot in his skull. 

“Sorry. I lost track of time.”

Jesse descends the spiral staircase and walks over to his table, leaning up against it next to him and folding his arms. Rob’s hand nearly comes up to rest on his thigh instinctively, but then he remembers there must be cameras in here somewhere, and so he lets it drop back down to his lap.

They don’t say anything for a moment, and then Jesse remarks, “You’re going a bit grey.”

He fixes him with a tired look. “I’m aware. So are you.”

“As long as my hair doesn’t fall out, it’s par for the course.” He pauses and peers over at him more closely. “It looks good on you. But you work too hard. You should relax more.”

Relax. If he’s a robot after all, then clearly, that word was never programmed into his code. He huffs a humorless laugh and pauses in his work for a moment, stretching his arms and then cracking his neck.

“Yeah, well. I think I’ve forgotten how.”

“Come home with me,” he urges. “I’ll remind you.”

Their eyes meet for a flash of a second. Rob feels a flush creep across his cheeks at the thought, enticing as it is, but he reaches back to his laptop after a moment.

“I will in a minute. I just have a few more emails to send.”

Jesse stays with him for a while, then grows tired of waiting and begins to wander around the room again, climbing back up the spiral staircase and disappearing out of view. Rob closes his laptop once he’s finished and goes looking for him, finding him on the second-story walkway browsing a bookshelf with records that appear to be from the late eighties, bound in thick volumes. Again, Rob is mesmerized by the rows upon rows of them, endless records of speeches, motions, and votes.

The politicians of old were still windbags like they are now, he thinks. Some things never change.

Jesse glances over at him briefly as he approaches, then goes back to staring, arms folded, seemingly lost in thought.

“What’re you thinking?” Rob asks when it becomes clear he isn’t going to say anything.

“Oh, nothing. Just how your name and mine are in these books,” Jesse murmurs distractedly, turning to face the railing and looking out into the sea of books. His voice is soft, its thoughtful cadence hypnotic. “We’ll go down in history. Even though no one really reads these or remembers. They’ll be here for hundreds of years, long after we’re both gone. Or until the sea rises and takes this place with it. And The Hague. The whole country, one day.”

Rob tries not to think of the inevitability of climate change often. It makes their work feel futile, and he refuses to give himself over to that sort of nihilism, but he knows deep down that he’s right. One day, they’ll be little more than names on paper. One day, this grand library and these beautiful buildings will be gone, any mark they left on them drowned in the ocean or crumbled into dust. One day, there will be nothing left at all and no one to remember their story, but they’ll have lived it all the same. Nothing - no force, no flood, no natural disaster or risen sea - can take that away from them.

“It’s all temporary. You and me. The Kamer. Politics,” Rob muses. “What we do means nothing in the end.”

Jesse hums and sets off down the walkway. Rob follows, a moth to his flame.

“Not nothing,” Jesse pushes back, glancing over his shoulder as they stroll. “We can still do it. Save the planet. Or if not that, then mitigate the effects of climate change, at least.”

“Sometimes I worry nothing we do here will ever be enough.”

“We built this country by reclaiming land from the sea,” he reminds him. “If anyone will survive it, it’ll be us.”

Jesse comes to a stop before a shelf without books on it and pauses there. Rob knows what it is at once: the shelf left empty to symbolize the years without records when parliament was suspended during the German occupation. Jesse seems to be turning something over in his mind as he takes them in, arms folded, before he glances sideways at him.

“Do you ever think about your legacy? How you’ll be remembered?” he asks, and Rob wants to laugh.

“I don’t have time. Do you?”

His lips quirk up into a slanted grin. “All the time.”

He isn’t the least bit surprised. Jesse considers the optics of everything he does, the long-term repercussions of even the most minute decision. He’s building a movement, positioning himself to ride on the wave of change. He thinks not of the next year but the next four, the next ten, the next election, and the one after that. Sometimes Rob feels like he can hardly manage to think ahead to next week.

He gives him a good-natured eye roll. “Of course you do.”

They pass a few minutes in silence, but it isn’t one that particularly feels like it needs to be filled. He’s usually uncomfortable with silence, or maybe just too unaccustomed to it after so many years in The Hague, but this one he feels like he could live in forever with him.

“We’re making a difference together,” Jesse says as he turns to face him, one hand on the railing. “Steering the country in the right direction. I know we are.”

“The two of us can’t save the planet by ourselves.”

“No,” he concedes, “but we can try. Even if we have to drag everyone along with us kicking and screaming.”

Jesse holds himself with such determination that all Rob can do is stare for a moment. He realizes, then, what makes him different from the rest, and what keeps him going though so many others accuse him of dealing in dreams. He hasn’t lost the spark he came here with, the intrinsic belief that what he is fighting for is right, and, more than that, that what he is fighting for is possible. He believes the planet can be saved. He believes they can affect meaningful change, and Rob admires his passion. He sometimes wonders if he’s lost his own, or maybe just compromised and bartered it away.

He isn’t an idealist like him, and he never will be. But he almost wishes he were right then.

“Come on,” Rob urges, nodding toward the exit. “Let’s go.”

So they do.

-

They don’t have long, but Jesse insists on going slow once they’re in his flat.

Not like before, in Paris, when they’d started slow and lost control after hardly five minutes. He draws everything out painstakingly, from undressing him to laying kisses across every inch of his skin. He teases with his fingers and rims him until he’s begging for more, something he’s rarely ever allowed anyone to make him do. As much as he loves control, he’s learned to love giving it up to him, too, because he trusts him not to take advantage. He finds strength in the vulnerability now. It’s its own form of power, with him.

He’s so used to fast, hard, quick, both in the bedroom and outside of it. He almost doesn’t remember how to be present in the moment anymore. He feels like he spends half his life getting ready to move on to the next item on his schedule, the next meeting, the next issue to tackle. The entire Kamer is like that, with every MP eternally jockeying for their next move. He doesn’t know how to be still, and he bristles at first when Jesse insists on doing so.

Kissing his way down his stomach as he is, the other man senses his impatience and meets his eyes with that look that dismantles him completely.

“You wanted to remember how to relax,” he rasps, tone leaving no room for debate. “Stay still.”

Jesse pins him down lightly with an arm across his hips, taking him into his mouth and humming around his cock. He’s rock-hard and throbbing, dangling on the precipice, but he forces himself to obey, easing back onto the mattress and watching with fascination as he sucks him. He’s far better than he was when they’d started, Rob thinks blearily. More familiar with the nuances of his anatomy. They’ve both learned each others’ bodies, grown fluent in a secret language all their own, and before long, he’s moaning freely, grasping at his curls and begging all over again.

He hadn’t turned on any lights before they’d started. The bedroom is dark, but Jesse is positioned in the lone bright spot, drenched in pale blue moonlight. It makes him look like some sort of marble sculpture, David or the Apollo Belvedere, a masterpiece made for him, unmaking him with his tongue. After a while, Jesse crawls his way back up and kisses him, then pulls back to take him in for a second. That look in his eyes is deeper than it’s been before, pupils as dark as pitch. They pull him in, past the point of no return.

It feels, in a way that he can’t pinpoint, more dangerous than it’s ever been.

He finally puts him out of his misery not long after, urging Rob to wrap his legs around him and burying himself inside him to the hilt. It’s reminiscent of their first time when they’d both been drunk and fumbling, spilling over with pent-up desire, but there’s none of that clumsiness now. Instead, Jesse kisses moans into his mouth, weaving their fingers together as he works deliberately atop him, quick enough to make him build but not fast enough to drive him over the edge unceremoniously. Rob dares to meet his eyes, and he’s still giving him that look, full of intensity that doesn’t stem from lust. His mouth hangs open ever so slightly as if ready to say something.

Overwhelmed, he lays back, letting the waves of pleasure pull him under, and he is just about to urge him to go faster, harder, anything, when-

“I love you. Fuck, I love you.”

He goes as rigid as a corpse beneath him. For a moment, he’s sure he must have misheard. That can’t be right. He can’t.

No. He can’t.

“Don’t-” he chokes out, feeling his orgasm begin to reach critical mass inside him. He fights it, desperate to remain lucid long enough to tell him this. “Don’t say that.”

It’s as if Jesse is too far gone to hear him. He buries his face in the juncture of his neck and shoulder and says it again, whispering it against his skin like a prayer. He wants to push him back. Pull him closer. He wants to scream at him to stop, to never stop. His vision has whited out, and the thumping of his tell-tale heart beneath his ribcage is all he can hear, building to a crescendo, and he’s lost, God he’s so lost - but still, he fights it, as if coming now will be a tacit admission that he feels the same. He doesn’t. 

He can’t. They’d agreed they never could. They’d had rules, they’d-

“Shut up,” Rob hisses at him. “Stop.”

Instantly, Jesse goes still. He’s always been overly attentive, in tune with his body, and scared of hurting him. He looks up the second he revokes consent, as if afraid he’s done just that, and the worried expression on his face breaks him, shatters any last fragment of willpower he had.

“Oh, God - don’t stop,” he pants after a moment, tightening his legs around him. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t know what he means. He can tell Jesse doesn’t, either. Don’t stop saying it. Don’t stop fucking me. Either. Both. Every line they’ve ever drawn has been blurred beyond recognition. He should’ve known better than to try to draw them in the first place.

Jesse only answers to himself. He was never going to abide by them.

Rob is so close that he’s gone almost limp beneath him, a shivering mass of need, holding on for dear life. It isn’t the feeling of him inside him that does him in, or the friction where his cock is pinned between their bodies, or the pleasure lancing hot and merciless through him. It’s Jesse leaning down and kissing him as gently as he ever has, and he disintegrates beneath his mouth at once, crying out with a muffled sound like a sob.

As soon as Jesse rolls off and lands beside him, he pulls away, turning his back to him and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. They’ve triggered his flight response, those words. He needs to get out of here. Far away from him. He feels something like hysteria curl around his chest, making it impossible to breathe.

It’d been his worst fear that one day he’d say those words to him. There’s no taking them back. No way to scrub their existence from the universe. His brain scrambles to rationalize it immediately. 

He doesn’t love him. He loves fucking him. He loves what they do, the way he makes him feel. People say things they don’t mean all the time during sex. He doesn’t love him.

He doesn’t. He does. He could see it in his eyes, clear as day - just like he saw it that first night too. He’s spent every day since then lying to himself and trying to convince himself otherwise, but there’s no lying here with everything stripped away from them, all the smoke and mirrors and half-truths they’ve always relied on.

He did this on purpose, breaking down all his defenses and lining him up in his crosshairs. Saying it when he knew he was most exposed. He must have. It’s intentional. Everything they do is. It’s cruel.

“Why did you-” Rob pants, still struggling to catch his breath. He can feel himself trembling, a horrified vibration beneath his skin. “Why did you say that?”

They are silent for a long, long time, the only sound to be heard their breathing as they compose themselves. Jesse reaches over to grasp his arm, and he shakes him off violently as if burned by the touch.

God. God. No matter how much he might feel the same, he never would’ve said it.

They’ve ignored plenty of truths since they started. This should have been one of them.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse breathes finally. He shifts forward, and he can feel his curls brush his back when he bows his head, penitent, like this bed is a confessional and he’s seeking absolution. Rob knows full well he has none to give. They’re both so deeply mired in sin he doesn’t even have any for himself. “I won’t say it again.”

Rob can feel something inside him burst open just then, splitting him down the middle, cracking open his bones, and unspooling their marrow. He’s inexplicably panicked to know that he won’t ever hear those words leave his lips again after tonight. He’s been waiting for them, he realizes. Some tiny, selfish part of his subconscious has wanted them longer than he can remember. He can’t let them go now that he’s had them, just like he couldn’t let him go either after having him the first time.

He should. Loving him will kill him. Kill both of them. It’s already started to, but he sits there and accepts that fate with abrupt, deadly certainty - because he does. He loves him, too.

“Say it again,” he hears himself whisper suddenly. He turns back to look at him. “Please.”

Once, he remembers, Jesse had been the resistant one, feigning nonchalance to keep him at arm’s length. Now, the truth spills out of him like a dam overflowing. Jesse kisses from his shoulder down to his fingers, hissing the words over and over until they’ve both lost count of how many times they’ve fallen from his lips. He murmurs them into his skin until they’re embedded there, lodged inside him like a dagger, but they were already, he thinks. All he’s done now is wrench them free and let the bleeding begin.

Rob swallows the words when they surface on his own tongue, choking them down.

He can’t say it back. He’s terrified of what will happen if he does. So he kisses him, says it without words, and decides that will have to be enough for the both of them.

Chapter Text

He’s out of sorts the following morning. 

Rob chalks it up to too little sleep and too much caffeine, spinning the story to fit his narrative like any good politician, and goes about his day as normally as possible. He avoids Jesse during the coalition meeting at nine, dodging him at the coffee pot and sitting as far away from him as he can at the table. It’s a strategy Jesse once employed with him, so he justifies it by deciding that it only serves him right. Still, he looks like a sad puppy when he notices, and it makes him feel horrible. 

He can’t stop hearing his words. I love you. I love you. They reverberate around his skull, drowning everything out, so much so that he has to ask a reporter interviewing him later that day to repeat her questions half a dozen times. He feels uneasy throughout his committee hearings and stays quiet during debate, even though Baudet’s constant stream of racist and anti-Semitic nonsense makes it difficult. He retreats to his office afterward and asks his aide to clear his schedule for the rest of the day because he’s aware that he’s useless and doesn’t need to make a fool out of himself anymore if it can be avoided. 

For a while, he just sits at his desk and makes a half-hearted attempt to read his mail. When the clock strikes six and the end of the day finally arrives, Jesse arrives with it. Rob knows it’s him by the knock on his office door, a familiar pattern of three taps with a pause after the first two. He considers pretending not to be there, then decides Jesse will see right through that charade; they both know he’s always here.

“Come in,” he calls out.

He steps in and closes the door behind him, all cavalier and half-dressed in his shirtsleeves like he always is after hours. He’s too comfortable in this place, Rob thinks to himself, then pauses and wonders if maybe he just isn’t comfortable enough.

“Hello,” Jesse greets as he pulls up a chair to the side of his desk and takes a seat.

“Hi.” Rob looks up briefly, then refocuses his attention on the letter in front of him and tries to swallow the lump gathering in his throat. “Do you need something? I’m not free tonight.”

“I happen to know that’s a lie. I ran into your aide in the hallway on her way out. She told me you had her clear your schedule.”

Dammit. He’ll have to have a talk with her about Jesse-proofing the details of his calendar from now on.

He purses his lips and finally sets down the papers before him, sliding them off to the side just as Jesse leans back and kicks his feet up onto the desk. He gives him that same disarming look that always achieves its intended effect, inclining his head slightly and peering over at him with raised eyebrows. 

Rob tries to bite back a grin and fails. “Is that necessary?” 

“Yes, quite necessary.” A moment passes, and Jesse takes them down, sitting up straight. “You’ve been avoiding me. I thought we were past that.”

A wave of exhaustion passes through him. Rob sighs. “We are, but can we do this another time? I’m not in the mood.”

“Fine. That’s not why I came by anyway,” Jesse tells him, rising to stand all at once and reaching into the pocket of his grey slacks. “I wanted to bring you a peace offering.”

He withdraws the object and sets it on the desk in front of him without an explanation. It takes Rob a moment to recognize what it is. At first, he thinks it’s a cigarette, but it’s too long and conical, wider at the top and tapering down toward the bottom. 

It’s only once he gets a whiff of the familiar skunk-like odor that he realizes what’s sitting before him.

He stares at Jesse in disbelief, mouth hanging open. “Is this a joke?”

“You said you’d forgotten how to relax. I thought it might help. You look like you could use one. I think everyone in this place could, honestly.”

Rob picks up the pre-rolled joint and turns it around in his fingers like some sort of alien life form. 

“I haven’t smoked since uni. Have you?”

“Could I really call myself a member of the Green party if I didn’t partake at least occasionally?”

“This is… this is unbelievable. You stood up in front of everyone in debate a few years ago and said you’d never done drugs,” Rob counters, and Jesse remains unfazed, tucking a hand in his pocket while holding his jacket over his shoulder with the other.

“Well, it isn’t a lie if I don’t consider weed a drug. Anyway, that’s all semantics. Smoke it when you get a chance.”

He heads for the door, and, before Rob can think better of it, he hears his own voice sounding out after him. 

“You’re going to bring me a joint and not stay to smoke it with me? That seems contrary to stoner etiquette.” He pauses, then admits, “Not that I’d know what that is, but.”

Jesse stops in the middle of the room and turns back with a wicked grin. He knows as soon as he does that was precisely his goal in coming here.

They swing open the double casement window in his office and take a seat together on the ledge, peering out into the streets several stories below as the last few rays of sun slip beneath the horizon. It’s pleasantly warm outside, and the air has taken on its early summer freshness, the indigo sky above them clear and cloudless. He watches in silence as Jesse pulls out a lighter, takes the joint, and rotates it between his thumb and index finger to light it evenly. The end glows orange as it ignites, but he’s far more interested in his fingers, deft and slender as they are. He loses all focus for a moment staring at them before Jesse inhales a puff, then hands the joint over to him.

He hesitates, pinching it between his own fingers and holding it at a slight distance as if it might burst into flames at any second. 

“Are you sure we won’t set off the smoke detectors?”

Jesse huffs a laugh. “You worry too much. So what if we do? Are you afraid Bergkamp will suspend us?”

He concedes that point with a nod and finally raises the joint to his lips to take a drag of it, breathing the smoke into his lungs and letting it settle there for a second, then releasing it. It’s different from smoking a cigarette, cleaner and lighter, but the inhale and exhale and the muscle memory of the motions are just as satisfying.

“You know,” he remarks, passing it back, “maybe I’ll give up cigarettes and switch to this instead.”

“Well, knowing your habits, I’m sorry to say you can’t just get baked repeatedly in times of crisis. But it would be better for you. Did you smoke much in uni?” Jesse inquires as he takes another pull and leans his head back slightly before exhaling, smooth and easy.

“No. I always did sports. Track. I thought it would mess with my lungs. Did you?”

“Mm-hm,” Jesse hums with his lips around the joint, in a way Rob can feel as deep as his bones. After a moment, he ashes it against the ledge then passes it to him again. “Probably another reason we never would’ve gotten together back then. You were one of the athletes; I was a stoner who despised all the athletes.”

“And your hair,” Rob teases.

He smirks. “Yes. My hair, too.”

“I knew you weren’t as straight-edge as you said you were,” he remarks, taking another hit. He can feel his muscles unwinding their tension and the back of his head going a bit fuzzy, the world slipping out of focus around him. “Not as straight in other ways, too.”

A stray curl falls onto Jesse’s brow just then. The other man fixes him with an amused look, eyes dancing, then takes the joint again. 

“No,” he agrees.

They sit without speaking for a while, passing the joint back and forth until Rob can feel his inhibitions rising out of him with each puff of smoke and evaporating into the night. He’s aware of parts of his body that he hadn’t been before, pleasantly spaced out and also impossibly honed in. The universe around them seems to expand and contract with his every breath. Time feels as thick as molasses, and all he wants to do is look him in the eyes and wade into it with him further.

“Where did you get this?” Rob asks as he passes it between them again.

“A coffee shop down the street. A friend of mine owns it. He’s promised he’ll never go to the press with tales of my debauchery.” Jesse pauses, looking down at the joint as it trails smoke into the air. “I have to say, I think the best thing the government ever did was decriminalize this stuff. Sometimes I wonder if most of the MPs who voted for it back then did it just so they could partake.”

“I should’ve known you smoke,” he comments with a loopy grin. “You seem like the type. I guess they call you the Green party for a reason.”

“I never thought you were one to stereotype.” Jesse pauses, then parrots the words back at him teasingly. “I should’ve known you didn’t. You seem like the type. This is probably the most reckless thing you’ve done in years.”

“That, and you.” Rob blows a pointed puff of smoke in his direction as a rebuke. “That’s rich, by the way, coming from someone who’s supposed to be concerned about CO2 emissions.” 

“One joint isn’t going to melt the polar ice caps. Now give me that.”

Rob obliges. “Who else in the Kamer smokes, do you think?”

“Segers was a bit too emphatic about never having tried it before. Lilianne Ploumen seems like she could be persuaded.” Jesse thinks for a moment, making a face as he runs through a list in his mind. “I would bet twenty euro Thierry Baudet sold the stuff in university. And I don’t think Wilders has ever had a day of fun in his life, so not him. I’ve smoked with Lilian Marijnissen before.”

He chortles. “Have you really?”

“Yes, she’s enjoyable company. She’s one of us, the new generation in this place. We’ll be the ones who change things. Clean up the mess the Mark Rutte’s of the world will leave behind.”

“Speaking of Rutte, do you think he’s ever tried it?”

“Well, if anyone needs to blow off some steam, it’s probably him. I’ll offer one day and report back.” Jesse looks at him a bit more intently, sitting up. “How do you feel?”

“Weightless,” is the word Rob comes up with after thinking for a second. “Like I could fly.”

Jesse looks at the open window next to them nervously. 

“Don’t go getting any ideas. That pretty face would be wasted on the pavement.” 

They chat about nothing and everything for a while. He laughs at things Jesse says that aren’t even remotely funny, but everything seems funnier, his chest fluttering with mirth. He laughs in a way he can’t remember laughing in the longest time. He’d forgotten how to do that, too, he realizes, so used to hiding his true feelings in front of the ever-present cameras. He can feel warmth pooling in his belly, stretching lower and licking at him like a flame. Almost subconsciously, he begins to undress, loosening his tie and undoing the top buttons of his shirt.

He can see Jesse watching him without a word, eyes cloudy with the high and with something else, something darker that makes him breathless and wild. Makes him want more.

He has no idea how long it’s been - an hour or ten minutes or twenty - and Jesse looks to be roughly in the same state of impairment as he is, although he tolerates it better. The other man has leaned back against the wall, one leg tucked up on the ledge beside him and the other resting on the floor. Rob watches, rapt, as he raises the joint to his mouth for another hit. He shivers when he wraps his lips around the end, then thinks of him wrapping his lips around something else entirely and shifts in his seat.

“I’m sorry for what I said last night,” Jesse pipes up all at once, stirring him from his reverie. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Rob could almost laugh. He wants to pretend as if he’s blameless here, but he isn’t. He’d asked him to say it again. Practically begged, in fact. If Jesse is the guilty party, then he is just as much so.

“It’s all right.” Rob swallows. “I can’t say it back, though. We can’t… we can’t both start saying that to each other.”

Jesse stamps out the end of the joint and discards it in a nearby waste bin, mulling that over in silence. When he opens his mouth again, it sounds like he’s holding his breath to keep himself from saying more. 

“I know.”

They are silent for a minute as the truth settles between them, hanging in the air like smoke.

“Don’t stop saying it,” he breathes, against his better judgment. “I meant that.”

“Weren’t there rules for this or something?” Jesse wonders aloud as if he’s only just remembered.

He throws his head back and laughs. “They’ve all been broken by now. I should’ve known better than to try with you.”

They sit contently for a while longer, letting the pleasant haze wash over them and staring down at the ocean of city lights below them. Finally, Jesse looks at his watch and seems to come back to himself. 

“I should go,” he says abruptly.

However, he makes no move to stand, staying planted there on the ledge with him. Rob knows at once that it’s a thin facade, that he wants to be asked to stay. 

That he wants exactly the same thing he does tonight.

Rob raises his eyebrows, moving in to kiss him. “Should you?”

“Yes,” he asserts, but Rob presses his lips down on Jesse’s to break his resolve, eliciting a low, feral sound from the back of his throat. It doesn’t take long before he’s drawn the word out of him that he was looking for: “No.”

With the last few dregs of his common sense, Rob remembers to close the window and lock the door. In the meantime, Jesse takes up his post leaning against the side of his desk, and they come back together as easily as two rivers at their confluence, lips colliding, hands groping for purchase. He feels both painfully present in his body and out of it as if he were viewing the two of them as a spectator. Jesse feels so incredibly hot beneath his hands, too. So responsive and alive, melding perfectly against him.

The high has done something to him. Awakened his senses. Flipped on a hundred new touch receptors beneath his skin that weren’t there before. Jesse reverses their positions and backs him up until his ass is pressed against the desk instead, then settles him down into a seated position. A container full of pens lands with a thump and a roll on the carpet. So does an award of his, Legislator of the Year, or some other hollow formality. He doesn’t even remember why he’d gotten it.

He lets it all fall without a second glance.

Jesse does away with the remaining buttons on Rob’s shirt and unbuckles his belt, murmuring something against his neck that he can’t understand. Everything else has been silenced by the cacophony of his own internal bodily sounds: blood pumping in his ears, heartbeat thudding, lungs gasping for breath. He’s painfully aroused already, blood pooling between his legs. The weed feels like it’s opened up his capillaries, his veins. He’s flushed all over, burning alive.

Jesse pulls back after he doesn’t respond and urges him to meet his eyes. “Can you stay quiet, or do we need to go back to yours?”

He gives an affirmative grunt, but he isn’t sure, in all honesty. All he knows is that he’ll never survive the journey back to his flat, that he needs and wants to fuck him here, and Jesse seems to agree because he seals his lips over his once more. Before Rob loses himself completely, he has the wherewithal to slide open his desk drawer and locate the bottle of lube stashed there. He passes it to Jesse, wondering what it says about him that he’s resorted to keeping that in his office.

Smoking weed and fucking his married colleague. It’s possible the Christians were right about him after all.

He is dimly aware of his pants and briefs crumpling into a puddle around his ankles, which he steps out of swiftly. Jesse urges him to turn over, and so he does, hitching a leg up to brace himself against the desk and allow him better access. The weed already has him relaxed and ready to fall open at a second’s notice, and he hears Jesse swear under his breath when he positions his slick fingers at his opening, pressing inside and encountering hardly any resistance from the ring of muscle there.

“Fuck,” Jesse curses behind him, breathing the word reverently as he adds another finger. “You’re so good for me. So good.”

“Do it,” he grinds out softly. He can’t breathe. He feels loose and pliant. Empty. So achingly empty, and the feeling of his fingers turns him on, but it isn’t what he needs. “Come on.”

“Ask me nicely.”

“Fuck you, how’s that for asking nicely?” he hisses, and Jesse just laughs, too high to bother exacting any sort of punishment.

His head is swimming. His brain processes things like a skipping reel of film, and when Jesse finally cants his hips forward, fucking into him, he cries out before he can remember to stifle it. His cock feels enormous inside him, and his body gives way eagerly, suctioning around him. He can feel every inch of it as he buries himself balls-deep and gives him a second to adjust, though he doesn’t need it in his state. For a moment, he swears their bodies are fused down to the smallest atom, to the tiniest molecule. He can feel his heart beating on his cock as if to draw him deeper.

His vision finally gives out when he begins to thrust in deep, leisurely strokes, torturously slowly at first but steadily picking up the pace. Jesse keeps him stable with one hand grasping his hip and the other on his shoulder, which is good because he’s lost all ability to hold himself up, too. His mind switches off. He’s aware only of sensations, more present in his body than ever before: the sensation of fullness, the slide of slick on slick, the tantalizing pressure on that spot inside him. The looseness in his muscles. The thought of what he must look like bent over a desk, filthy and debased.

When that thought creeps into his mind, he must moan again because Jesse reaches around from behind and clamps a hand over his mouth, which only spurs him on more. It’s raw and merciless. It’s real, the only real thing he has anymore. He feels like a fish in a fishbowl most of the time under constant scrutiny, an ant beneath a magnifying glass gradually being burnt to a crisp. He’s seen by so many but never really seen - not by anyone except him. This is who he is: shivering, secret. His.

His. Fuck all the rest of it, the titles, the power, the prestige. That’s all he wants to be.

Rob squeezes his lower muscles around his cock in a way that he knows will drive him wild, and he hears him muffle a gasp, burying his face into the nape of his neck. Jesse shifts, then, adjusting his angle, and it forces a spike of pleasure through him, then another in quick succession. He buckles beneath them, letting go entirely and becoming as limp as a doll, so far from his reserved public persona now that he wants to laugh. 

He doesn’t know why he’s never tried this after smoking before. He thinks he might perish right here. 

He wonders what would be on the death certificate. Fucked into oblivion, maybe. What a way to go.

He loses track of how many times he comes. One orgasm seems to roll over into the next until they’re indistinguishable from one another, and he’s left gasping for air, sweaty fingers scrambling to hold onto the desk. He feels like if he doesn’t, he might begin to float away, but Jesse holds him down like gravity, silent and sure as he fucks him through each wave. When Jesse finally reaches around to grip his cock and finish him off for good, he nearly collapses from the force of it.

He isn’t entirely sure how much time has passed before he comes back to himself, but he realizes that Jesse has released his hold on his mouth and pulled out. He almost stops breathing when he feels him sink to his knees behind him and open his mouth to clean him without a word. The feeling of his lips closing around his hole nearly does him in for good, and Rob swears, one last violent judder rippling through him.

“You don’t-” he chokes out. “You don’t have to, I’ll-”

Jesse’s answer floats up softly from below. “I want to.”

It unnerves him to trust someone with the necessary aftercare of his body. It feels so intensely personal and private, somehow even more intimate than the act itself. It’s a level of vulnerability he hates displaying, but something about Jesse makes him feel safe enough to allow it. He respects his body. He seems almost in awe of it and the pleasure it gives both of them. He kneels like a Catholic at communion, opening his mouth to receive him. He wants it. He wants to take care of him, use his tongue to clean the mess he’d made.

Trembling, he lets him.

After completing his task, Jesse pulls his underwear and slacks back up, then spins him around and kisses him deeply. He puts him back together just as easily as he’d taken him apart, and Rob melts beneath his mouth, marveling at the turnabout.

It’s hard for him to stay upright as Jesse dresses; his limbs might as well be made of gelatin, but somehow he manages. His office looks like a hurricane has torn through it, with papers and pens on the floor and the faint scent of weed still lingering in the air. He’s always been one to keep everything almost obsessively in order, but somehow, he can’t find it in himself to care with Jesse. He gives himself over to the mess. He relishes in it.

“Relaxed now?” Jesse asks finally as Rob tries to stand and wobbles.

He feels high twice over, in a weed and orgasm-induced haze. His vocabulary has been fucked right out of him, it seems, and so he just ends up giving a half-crazed laugh instead.

“That-” he sputters, finally. “That was… Wow. Well, I’ll never be able to look at this desk the same way again.”

Jesse closes the gap between them and pecks him hard on the mouth. “Good.”

“Thank you,” Rob finds himself saying, of all things.

He isn’t quite sure what he means, but he looks at Jesse right then and swears he’s never seen anyone more breathtaking in his life, flushed cheeks and wild curls all wrapped up with a small sultry grin. It might be the high talking, or maybe just the high stirring up something inside him that was already there, but he inhales him into his lungs and knows, without a doubt, that this is right. If there is one person for everyone, a soulmate, a destiny, then this must be it.

This must be his.

“My pleasure,” Jesse says with a wink. “And yours, evidently.”

Chapter Text

The universe, in its infinite wisdom, decides to grace him with a cold in the middle of May.

It begins in his head, congesting his sinuses until they feel pressurized enough to explode. By Tuesday morning, it’s escalated to full-blown sniffles and sheer misery. It’s a familiar turn of events, happening two or three times a year when his immune system finally loses its ability to keep pace with him, and Rob decides to power through it as best he can. He doesn’t have time to be sick.

Ever since arriving in the Kamer, he’s held himself to a near-impossible standard. It is his job to be perfect. Unimpeachable. His relative youth, coupled with his catapult to party leadership, has forced him to work harder than everyone around him to prove that he deserves to be there. Failure has never been an option; if he fails, they will say it’s because he’s too young, too inexperienced. If he fails, it will prove his detractors right, and that he won’t allow. 

It’s worn him down little by little over the years, like a rope beginning to fray. He feels sometimes like he could snap at any second.

He just barely drags himself out of bed in the morning to make an early meeting with the members of D66. He’s fifteen minutes late, and he doesn’t often allow himself to slip like that, but he feels unusually strung up by his nerves and half-high on cold medicine. He sits through the meeting in a haze that not even copious amounts of caffeine seem to be able to dispel, and Sigrid notices because Sigrid notices everything. She approaches him afterward, standing over him where he sits at the table and staring down with a scowl.

“You look like shit,” she tells him frankly, without so much as a hello. 

He’s so tired her words don’t register for a moment, and he isn’t sure how to respond when they do.

“Uh, thank you?” he croaks, then immediately sneezes.

“If you’re sick, you should go home. Take the rest of the day off. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard.”

He flips his notes closed and collects them, then stands. “I can’t. I have a full day of meetings and question time at two, and-”

“Go home,” she cuts him off, voice gentle but with an audible edge to it that indicates he shouldn’t disobey her further. “You’re not any use to me when you’re like this, and I don’t want you infecting the rest of us. If you send a single email, I’ll find out, and I’ll find a new deputy. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

Sigrid leaves before he can object, but he doesn’t have the energy, nor does he want to. One way or another, Rob manages to drag himself back to his flat like a bag of bricks, where he falls onto his sofa with a muffled thump and covers his eyes with one hand, feeling another headache begin to form there.

For a while, he only sits there, taking in the place that has never felt like home. Somehow, it doesn’t feel like much of a refuge anymore either. It’s all high ceilings and cold, sleek chrome, impersonal and too pristine. He’s considered trying to make it homelier a few times over the years but always loses interest after buying a few pieces of decor and stowing them haphazardly in a closet. He thinks it probably looks like a ghost lives here, with the utter lack of personal touches. Or a serial killer.

It’s unnerving, having a moment alone with his thoughts like this. So unnerving, in fact, that he decides he has to drown them out and reaches over to switch on his television for only the third or fourth time since he bought it years ago. He flips through the channels for a while, pausing to watch snippets of things before quickly losing interest and moving on. He repeats this pattern a dozen times - until, all at once, he finds himself staring Jesse Klaver in the face.

That holds his interest very well. 

Rob blinks at first, certain that he’s had too much cough syrup and begun to hallucinate, but he hasn’t. Jesse peers back at him from the screen, seated in a studio across from the host of a news program, clad in a navy suit with his hair damp as if he’d recently showered. He is being interviewed live about something and gestures with his hands as he speaks, giving a long, in-depth response to a question about the per-kilometer road use tax.

If he could remember how, Rob thinks he would laugh. Leave it to Jesse to find his way to him even on his sick day.

He watches his expressions closely; the way he raises his eyebrows as he talks, laughs easily, comes across so warm. He leans forward and seems engaged with the line of questioning. He has a certain magnetism that isn’t teachable, refined enough to command respect, but unrefined enough to project authenticity. He never has to force anything. It all comes naturally to him, and Rob realizes he’d still be just as enamored even if he didn’t know him, if he were just a private citizen like any other.

“So, Mr. Klaver,” the interviewer begins after Jesse has given a thorough and passionate rundown of the government’s tax policy that hardly gets the adrenaline pumping. “In March, we heard reports that there was disagreement in the coalition about how to handle the prime minister’s role in the State Attorney embezzlement case. What do you think should have been done? Is it time that he steps down and clears the way for someone new?”

Rob has no idea what he’ll say to that. Thankfully, Jesse prevaricates as best he can, knowing his place.

“Naturally, there were conversations,” he replies. “I do think he did a good job of taking responsibility, but I also don’t think it’s going to be as easily forgotten as the last time. There are still families out there suffering from having their childcare benefits withdrawn on the government’s watch a few years ago. Their entire lives were upended. We’ve started to make amends, yes, but some things can’t be swept under the rug. I believe we have a duty to restore public trust in government, and I think the prime minister plays a key role in that.”

“If GreenLeft were still in the opposition, would your answer be different?”

Jesse doesn’t so much as pause to think. It’s clear he’s anticipated this question, or more likely, his comms team had prepped him beforehand. He begins speaking without hesitation, giving that non-answer on which he’d coached him what feels like an eternity ago.

“Well, that goes without saying. You have to make sacrifices and compromises when you enter government. It’s a fine line that you toe between standing up for what you believe and cooperating for the greater good. You don’t have the freedom you do in opposition, but you do have a seat at the table. We decided it was a trade-off worth making.”

“And do you think GreenLeft still stands up for what it believes? You’ve criticized parties like D66 before for bending to the will of their coalition partners too often.”

“I do,” Jesse says with a nod, leaning forward on the table and clasping his hands together. “We wouldn’t have decided to join the government if we couldn’t. You can only do so much from the sidelines, and I think our voters wanted to see more from us. Working with D66 and Labour, I believe we’ll be able to steer the coalition in the right direction. Sometimes change has to be incremental. Will I always push for more aggressive climate measures? Of course. But now I’m pushing from the inside, not the outside. And I know it’s making a difference.”

Rob kicks his feet up onto the armrest of his sofa and lies back, not taking his eyes off the screen. He is captivated by him. He has doubted from time to time whether Jesse becoming prime minister will ever be a realistic possibility, but watching him now, centered in himself and perfectly in his element, he knows it could be. He feels himself drifting off, body folding under the weight of its exhaustion, but doesn’t switch off the television. He watches even as his eyelids flutter shut, hanging on every last word.

“What do you say to the people who are skeptical that the cabinet will last through the end of its term?” the interviewer asks next. “The ideological differences between parties are stark. Hearing that there was conflict early on doesn’t instill much confidence for the future.”

“It’s a fair question. I would argue that having a diverse coalition is a good thing. It reflects the diversity of this country. I can’t speak to whether or not it’ll last because it’s not only up to me.” Jesse’s eyes dance with mirth, and he leans back, taking a sip of the coffee mug resting before him. “But hope springs eternal, and everyone might call me an idealist, but I’m also an optimist.”

Rob drifts off not long after. The sound of his voice bleeds into his dreams, inescapable even at rest. He awakes an hour or two later in the late afternoon, hearing it echo so clearly he swears Jesse must be there with him, but when he scans his flat, he’s as alone as he ever was and more bothered by the fact than ever before.

-

The intercom in his flat buzzes around seven that evening.

It startles him out of another medication-induced nap, and he pads across his floor blearily to press the button that answers it. He wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some sort of get-well-soon delivery from Sigrid or someone else in D66; they all know he hasn’t taken a day off in years, and he’s sure his absence has been noted. 

“Hello?” he calls into the speaker.

He’d know the voice that answers anywhere. 

“Special delivery,” Jesse announces cheerfully on the other end. “It’s me. Jesse. I’m not the delivery. Or - well, I guess I am part of it.”

Rob laughs. “You really think I wouldn’t know your voice?”

“The day I start assuming everyone knows who I am will be the day I need to retire from politics. Now buzz me in.”

He obliges, and not long after, there’s a knock on his door, which he pulls open at once. Jesse is there on the other side, still in his suit from work and holding a reusable grocery bag in each hand. He steps aside to let him in, and Jesse sets the bags down on his kitchen island, then pauses to look back at him where he stands near the door.

“I noticed you weren’t at question time,” he explains as he begins to unload what looks like the ingredients to something. “I asked Sigrid, and she told me you went home sick.”

He cringes inwardly. As if Sigrid needs one more reason to be suspicious of them.

“Uh, yeah. It’s just a cold. It’s not a big deal,” he replies, coming to stand opposite him and leaning against the island. Jesse continues retrieving things from the bag until before them rests a veritable rainbow of vegetables, spices, and other ingredients. “What is this?”

“I thought I’d cook you some comfort food,” Jesse explains with a shrug. “Soto ayam. It’s an Indonesian version of chicken soup, my grandmother’s recipe. She used to make it for me when I was little and came down with something. Without chicken; I know you don’t eat meat.”

For a moment, all Rob can do is stare at him where he stands, as comfortable here as he would be in his own home. It’s like he belongs here, and he does, he thinks to himself; he feels like he belongs here even more than he does. The thoughtfulness of it all takes him aback, but he isn’t making a show of it as if it’s some grand gesture. He’s just looking at him with a humble little smile, gentleness in his eyes.

He could’ve gone home, left him to his own devices. Instead, he’d brought all this. Instead, he’d chosen him. He can feel a foolish little flicker in his chest at the thought.

“You-” he begins, then falters, a bit overwhelmed by it all. “You don’t have to. Really. I’m fine. I’m-” He sneezes into his arm, then scurries off to find a tissue. “Oh, God. I’m disgusting, is what I am.”

Evidently, Jesse has no patience for that. He raises his eyebrows. “I think you look perfect.”

Rob is painfully aware he doesn’t. His hair is a mussed wreck, he hasn’t showered, and he’s clad only in a wrinkled t-shirt and sweatpants. All of him is a wreck, really; a hideous, mucus-filled, walking virus, and somehow Jesse is still looking at him like there’s no one else in the world he’d rather be with.

“I do not,” he mutters, blowing his nose and tossing the tissue in the kitchen garbage. “I look like shit, as Sigrid was kind enough to tell me earlier.”

“Sigrid has no eye for beauty unless she can use it to her advantage somehow,” Jesse assesses rather brutally. He can’t say he’s wrong. “Come here. I’ll prove it. Kiss me.”

Jesse moves in to do just that, but Rob swerves out of the way at the last second, laughing. “No - no, don’t. I’ll get you sick.”

“Mm,” Jesse acknowledges with a hum as he retrieves a cutting board from one of his cabinets. “You’re probably right. Sit down. I’ll get dinner started.”

“What do you want me to do? I can help.”

“I want you to sit down,” he repeats. “Just because everyone says you’re a robot doesn’t mean you have to act like one. Let someone take care of you for once.”

He considers insisting, then decides against it when Jesse fixes him with another eminently less patient look, clearly not about to budge. Finally, he acquiesces, making his way over to his sofa and lying back down. He leaves the television running in the background but watches Jesse instead with his hands folded behind his head. It’s more entertaining than any show could be anyway, watching him try to puzzle out the location of things in his kitchen and continually being thwarted by the lack of cooking implements. It’s one more thing he’s never bothered to buy for this place; he usually just subsists off of takeout or the light fare at events when he’s in town during the week.

“A ladle,” Jesse calls out from his place standing over the stove. He makes another pass through his cabinets, then huffs, hands on his hips. “Where’s your ladle?”

Rob blinks. “I don’t think I have one.”

Jesse just stares at him, then shakes his head.

“Okay, fine. A big spoon then,” he tries again, gesturing with his hands to indicate the approximate size of what he’s looking for. “Like a serving spoon.”

“I have normal spoons.”

Jesse makes do for a while before he pipes up again, holding up a pair of saucepans. “Are these the only pans you own?”

“Yes. Why?”

The other man sets them down on the counter with a scoff, growing increasingly frustrated. “Okay. Then tell me you have a strainer, at least.”

Rob stares back blankly. “Why would I need a strainer?”

“Good God. I can’t work in these conditions. It’s a good thing I brought the spices; you don’t seem to own any of those either.”

Thoroughly enjoying egging him on by now, Rob smirks, playing up his cluelessness for effect. “That isn’t true. I have salt and pepper.”

Jesse throws up his hands in defeat before finally breaking character and smiling back. 

“This is - this is unbelievable. You’re a heathen.”

“I’m sorry my kitchen isn’t up to your standards,” he quips. “I just don’t like cooking. I’m no good at it anyway.”

“Yes, I remember the time you brought chicken cutlets to that fraction leaders’ retreat,” he says with a smirk as he minces a few cloves of garlic. “They were raw, and you almost gave all of us food poisoning. Which is a clever way to sideline your political opponents, if that was the goal.”

“First, that wasn’t my goal. Second, the breading was cooked to perfection; how was I supposed to know it was raw on the inside? And third, I would absolutely serve Geert Wilders raw chicken again. Intentionally, this time.”

Jesse laughs, and the sound crawls under his skin, giving him goosebumps. It feels refreshing just to be here with him like this, enjoying a normal evening. It’s an easy sight to lose himself in: the sight of him cooking, all charmingly domestic in a way hardly anyone ever sees him. He’s removed his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and slung a towel over his shoulder, moving about in the kitchen with a graceful mastery that only comes with experience. It feels like peering into a hidden window into his psyche, seeing him lay down his armor and lose himself in a passion other than politics. 

He’s too easy to love, like this. Far too easy.

Jesse must notice a thoughtful look on his face because he pauses dicing a shallot long enough to ask, “A cent for your thoughts?”

It startles him back to reality at once, and he clears his throat, playing coy. 

“If you have one to give me.”

Jesse rolls his eyes but drops it and carries on for a while longer, chopping vegetables and measuring spices - or just throwing them in the pot without measuring, rather, which bewilders Rob. Whenever he’s tried to eyeball things while cooking, they wind up overseasoned to the point of inedibility, whereas Jesse cooks almost as if he can sense how much it needs through some sort of osmosis.

It’s raining outside, a fierce, howling summer storm battering his windows as if trying to break inside, but in their little nest hidden from the world, Rob is barely even aware of it. His apartment fills with a smell that makes him hungry for the first time all day, a savory aroma of ginger, garlic, and turmeric. Eventually, he grows tired of only watching him and pops up from the couch, making his way over to where he stands at the stove and snaking his arms around him from behind. He breathes in the smell of him, too, relaxing against his body.

He doesn’t belong to him, and he never will, and he knows that. But for one evening, at least, they can pretend.

“You’ll make me sick,” Jesse chuckles a half-hearted reminder, and Rob pulls away at once as if burned.

“Right. Sorry.”

Something snaps in Jesse at the words. He must sense him shrink back into himself because he drops what he’s doing at once and turns, catching his arm, hauling him in for a kiss, and pressing him up against the counter in a way that knocks all the air out of his lungs. They’re both breathless when he pulls away, and Rob grins.

“I’ll make you sick,” he tries to remind him, but Jesse shakes his head.

“I don’t care,” is all he says, kissing him again.

He winds up seated on the counter with Jesse standing before him, his hand in Jesse’s hair and the other in his belt loop, kissing him deeply, legs curled around his waist. Normally this would be one step in a familiar sequence of events: first a kiss in the living room, then the bedroom, and so on. They both know he isn’t up for anything like that tonight, but somehow, this feels like enough. It feels better, like the night he’d held him while he fell asleep, never needing anything more than just his presence.

For the most part, they’ve denied themselves things like these up until now, and it wasn’t without good reason. Moments like these leave open the possibility for something more. They practically invite destruction, but when they break apart, Jesse stays tucked against his body, resting his forehead on his chin, and Rob decides he’s beyond caring.

“Thank you for doing all this,” Rob tells him lowly. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I did. In sickness and in health.”

Words to a vow they’ll never take. A vow he’s already taken, Rob thinks. It makes something throb hopelessly inside him, an empty, negative space, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on it.

They sit in silence for a while, still pressed together, as the soup bubbles away on the stove beside them. He can’t remember the last time he was so content. He’s happy, in a way he isn’t often anymore. He’s daydreamed a scenario like this what must be half a hundred times, and that’s precisely what this is, now: a dream. A fantasy. Still, he thinks he’d sleep forever if it meant staying here with him. Jesse’s eyes are downcast, lips pursed in the way they are whenever he’s deep in thought. 

Rob notices and furrows his brow. “What’re you thinking?”

It stirs Jesse from his reverie, and he gives him a distracted smile. “You aren’t going to offer me a cent?”

“I don’t have one,” he chuckles, then grows serious. “Tell me.”

“Just that I love you,” Jesse whispers against his neck, hiding his face there as if embarrassed. Rob tenses reflexively and, sensing that, he releases a long, pained sigh. “You asked.”

Rob considers pulling away. Once, he would’ve. But that ship has sailed, and it’s long gone by now. So he draws him closer instead of pushing him away, snaking his arms around his shoulders and breathing him in for the longest moment in the world. He closes his eyes and tugs him so close that to anyone else, they might look like one being instead of two, limbs, bodies, and hearts all fused. Like the plaster casts of the lovers at Pompeii, locked together in one final embrace.

If he knew what was good for him, he would push him away. The longer this goes on, the more it’ll hurt when it comes to its inevitable end. This thing came with an expiration date stamped on the tin; they both know that. It can’t go on forever, but the thought of stopping fills him with such wild, hysterical agony that he can’t even begin to contemplate how he would go about doing it.

He’ll think about it in the morning. Or the next. Or the one after that.

Or never. Never.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Jesse tells him, voice low and mournful. He pulls away enough to look him in the eyes and gives him an unsteady smile, then presses a kiss to his hand. “I just wanted you to know.”

Rob opens his mouth, then falters. He hates himself for being so afraid. He can pretend to be brave all he wants, but when it comes down to it, here behind closed doors, he’s a coward. He’s too scared to say it back, even though he’s already said it in a hundred unspoken ways.

He should be able to. He should. But it hadn’t felt like this with his partner, with anyone he’s dated before. It’s never felt this real or this fucking terrifying. He’s never let anyone get this close. He’d tried not to let him, but Jesse is just as stubborn as he is, as inexorable as the earth turning. He’d known what he’d wanted, and he’d wanted him.

Finally, Rob wrenches the first word free, a tiny, breathless: “I-”

Beside them, the stove timer blares.

It’s an all-too-realistic intrusion of reality, and it puts a damper on the moment at once. Rob clears his throat and hops down off the counter, wondering if it’s a sign from the universe or some higher power trying to save him from himself. Jesse looks similarly scatter-brained but collects his thoughts quickly and returns to the stove.

He clears his throat and summons up a smile to send his way. “Soup’s on.”

They eat at his kitchen island, seated side by side on the barstools and hunched over their bowls. Rob slurps a spoonful into his mouth then immediately launches into a coughing fit at the sheer amount of spice overwhelming his tastebuds.

“What did you put in here?” he manages in between coughs.

Unbothered by it himself, Jesse snickers. “Sambal. And red chilis. It helps clear out the sinuses. Here. You’ll need these.”

He reaches over for a handful of tissues and passes them to him. Rob blows his nose, taking a moment to recover.

“At least there’s a science to this,” he says, “and you aren’t just trying to make me suffer.”

“No, that’s just an added bonus.” Rob glares, and he chuckles. “There’s turmeric in there, too. It has anti-inflammatory properties. It’s good for you. Eat up.”

Even though it’s spicy, he can’t deny that it’s delicious, savory and hearty but not heavy. It’s comforting in the way only a tried-and-true family recipe can be. The burn settles into something more manageable over time. By the end, Rob does feel significantly less congested, his body pumped full of adrenaline from the heat and a pile of tissues accumulated at his side. He clears the dishes after, then lingers behind Jesse as the other man loads them into the dishwasher. 

While this is a different routine than usual, he knows there’s one part that isn’t going to deviate, and when Jesse checks the time on his phone, they both sigh.

“I have to go,” he says, peering outside at the storm reluctantly.

Rob almost flinches, though he knew the words were coming. However, he forces himself to smile, tilting his head to one side and moving in closer.

“You could stay,” he purrs, pretending to joke, though he couldn’t be more serious. “You got stuck late at the office, then got a flat on your bike, so a kind stranger took you in, offered you shelter from the storm…”

Of all the times they’ve spent the evening together, he’s never done this: tried to make him stay. It was unspoken but strictly off-limits. Against the rules, if there even are any left at this point. He knows the reality of the life waiting for him back at home. He knows he’ll never choose him over that. He can’t, but increasingly Rob finds himself dreaming that one day he could.

“Very funny. Don’t tempt me.”

“I mean it,” Rob presses. He brings his hands up to rest on his sides, anchoring him there. Begging him. He’s so tired of seeing him leave. “Stay.”

Jesse wavers. He’s always had expressive eyes that can never hide what he’s feeling, and he can see how torn he is now. However, he hardens after a moment and shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he pleads, voice shaky. Rob fills in the blanks with ease. Don’t do this. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Don’t ask me to stay. Don’t want me to stay.

“Okay,” he surrenders with a long exhale. “I’m sorry.”

Jesse rises up on his toes and presses a kiss to his forehead, then heads for the door. He looks like he knows that if he stays any longer, he won’t be able to leave at all, so he cuts and runs. However, he stops and lingers in the doorway for a few seconds too long with a terribly sad look in his eyes.

“I love you,” is all he says before he turns to go. “Feel better.”

-

When Rob steps into a conference room in the Binnenhof Thursday afternoon for the coalition meeting, feeling much improved, he finds perplexingly enough that Jesse isn’t there. 

As long as they’ve been in a coalition together, he hasn’t missed a single meeting, and he knows he wouldn’t do it without good reason. His second-in-command Corinne stands in for him, and Rob considers texting him but settles on approaching her after it concludes instead, making his way over to her seat as everyone begins to gather their belongings.

“Corinne,” he begins with a smile, attempting to appear as nonchalant as possible, “have you seen Jesse? He doesn’t usually miss these, so I was wondering.”

She collects her purse and smiles back. “Oh, yes. He went home sick this morning. Probably just a cold. Weren’t you sick a couple of days ago too? I think there’s something going around.”

She leaves him with that, and he returns to his seat, pulling out his phone and tapping out a message, then hitting send. It rockets off into the digital stratosphere with a decisive whoosh.

I did make you sick after all.

He doesn’t expect him to respond quickly, but after a minute, his phone vibrates. 

The things I do for love.

His heart rockets into his throat. He takes a look around as the room begins to clear out to make sure no one is watching him before he replies.

I’m sorry. Feel better.

A second passes. Then, another buzz, with one final message that leaves him grinning like a fool.

It was worth it just to kiss you.

Chapter Text

It all falls apart one night in June. 

Debate concludes at a reasonable hour for once, and they make their way back to his flat together, falling into their old routine without so much as a second thought. There’s still fire between them - there always will be, Rob thinks - but this thing they have has settled into something more tender over time. It no longer feels like a mistake, though he realizes it never really did from the beginning. They were always on a collision course. Always inevitable, one way or another.

Jesse pulls him down onto his sofa and into his lap without saying a word. Rob goes. It feels as natural as gravity, tumbling toward him. They’re both aware they don’t have long tonight, and so they remove their jackets and set about unbuttoning their shirts, unable to get everything off fast enough. Out of nowhere, he finds himself recalling the night they started, when he had watched him sit on this sofa and shuddered from restraint, from wanting him so badly.

“You know,” Rob muses between kisses, “I never thought I’d end up being so glad I agreed to Thierry’s stupid drinking game that night.”

Jesse laughs. “Speaking of, you never did answer my question. When I asked if that was your plan all along.”

“It was. Was it yours?”

Jesse doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls him in for another kiss, humming against his mouth, “I love you.”

He doesn’t expect him to say it back, Rob knows, and he won’t. They’ve come to an agreement, realizing that a mutual exchange of those words would open them up to the unthinkable: to action. To wanting to change their lives so they could be together. They both know they never can, and Jesse is an idealist, but he isn’t stupid.

He can’t tell him he loves him, so he sinks to his knees and shows him instead. He takes him into his mouth and meets his eyes, lacing their fingers together on the cushion as Jesse moans, telling him he’s good, so good, God. The praise makes him shudder, but he focuses on him single-mindedly, not allowing himself to consider his own desires. Jesse pulls him back up into his lap afterward, kissing him deeply and tasting himself on his tongue.

He is perpetually on edge in the Kamer, with everyone wanting him to chip off pieces of himself and give them away, advocate for this cause, this legislation, this proposal. He gives and gives sometimes until he feels like he has nothing left. With him, he feels made whole. He feels real, flesh and blood and anchored to his body, not his optics or talking points.

They hear the turning of a spare key in the lock two seconds too late.

He only remembers things in flashes after the door swings open. There is a pause, at first, and an awful silence. Tensing, bracing themselves for the storm. Yelling, then. More pained than he’s ever heard from his partner before. Jesse scrambling out from underneath him, out the door. 

He never comes to The Hague, but he’d come to surprise him for something. Their anniversary, Rob thinks it was, which he’d forgotten about like he does every year. They fight, but it’s one-sided. He has no room to talk, no way of defending the indefensible.

He has no idea how long it goes on for. Minutes. Hours. He feels too frozen to cry, even as he watches the past seven years evaporate into thin air before his eyes.

Then, words that turn his blood to ice in his veins, chilling him to the bone:

“End it. End it, or I swear to God I’ll tell everyone. He has a family. A fucking family, Rob. End it.”

-

The next few days pass in a hellish blur.

Rob can only manage to go through the motions of sitting through meetings and attending committees. He feels sick with anxiety. He hardly manages to eat more than a few bites of food each day. Sigrid tells him that he looks like a ghost, and when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he realizes she’s right: he is gaunt, pallid, dead-eyed, and he looks so much older. He barely recognizes himself. Beneath his skin, he can feel his heart racing, skipping beats every so often like a sputtering car running out of gasoline. 

He can always feel his heart episodes before they come on, sometimes for days beforehand. It churns beneath his skin, ready to strike at any second, and it only makes him more distraught. It’s like an ouroboros, a vicious cycle continually feeding itself.

Jesse calls and texts incessantly, but he doesn’t answer. He’s terrified that he’ll be found out if he does, somehow. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a Tweet or call from a reporter, or for the story to break in the media. Realistically, there is no way his partner would know if they continued to carry on as they have been, but he realizes that doesn’t matter.

They need to end it anyway. This was always a ticking time bomb, fated to end in disaster for all involved. He’d been kidding himself to think there could be any other outcome. He was stupid to let himself fall like he had. 

He should’ve known better. He did, and that’s the worst part of it all.

Finally, on Thursday, Jesse pulls him aside after the coalition meeting and into an alcove near the restrooms. Once he is satisfied they’re secluded enough, Rob turns his eyes to him and folds his arms to create a blockade between them, clenching his jaw. It feels cold, but it has to be. There’s no other way.

Jesse looks frantic in a way he’s rarely ever seen him. He starts to speak, but his mouth snaps shut, and then he leans in closer, hissing under his breath, “You haven’t answered my calls in days.”

Someone walks by just then, and panic rips through Rob like a bullet in the back of his head. They can’t talk here, where anyone might overhear them, so he takes another sweep of the area, then nods toward an empty committee room nearby where they take refuge instead.

“What?” he sibilates once he closes the door. He notices Jesse flinch, and his chest tightens, but he can’t apologize. No more tenderness. “What do you want?”

“Talk to me!” Jesse shoots back. “What happened? Tell me.”

They lapse into silence. He can feel his heart rate picking up, something internal flipping a switch, triggering his flight response, and releasing a volley of adrenaline through his veins. He needs to run, suddenly. He can’t be alone with him for another second. He needs to get back to his office. If someone were to find them here-

He wipes the sweat from his clammy forehead. “He said he’d tell everyone if we don’t end it. Maybe he will anyway. I don’t know.”

“Fuck,” Jesse breathes and runs a shaky hand over his mouth. “Fuck. He had a fucking key, Rob? This whole time?”

“He works abroad. I didn’t even know he was in the country, I-” He breathes out sharply, frustrated with himself for his own stupidity and carelessness. “Look, we have to stop. We should’ve stopped months ago before this happened. We never should’ve started.” His voice breaks. He feels a wave of lightheadedness pass through him. “I have to go.”

He can see a shift in Jesse as if he can tell something about him is off, and he reaches out, taking hold of Rob’s arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he grinds out, heading for the door. “I need to go, I-”

He leaves him with that and makes a break for it on unsteady legs. He has no idea how he does it, but somehow he makes it back to his office, barely even aware of the sound of Jesse’s footsteps trailing behind him. The palpitations in his chest seem to grow stronger by the second as the attack begins to grip him in earnest, hurtling toward him like a freight train on the tracks. He tries to shut the door before Jesse can enter, but he’s upon him in seconds, closing the door behind them both instead and placing a hand on his back to stabilize him.

“What’s going on?” he demands, downright terrified. “Rob. Hey. Look at me.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, Jesus Christ-”

He ambles over to his couch and all but collapses down onto it, pulling at his tie frantically like a noose around his neck. He has to get it off, get his jacket off. Get everything off. It’s all too tight. He can’t breathe, he can’t-

Jesse reaches for him again, and he recoils. “It’s… just my heart. It happens sometimes.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital, or-”

“No,” he pants, finally easing himself back down into a lying position on the sofa. “No, I just need to… do this for a while.” Jesse remains beside him uselessly, looking like he doesn’t quite know what to do or how to help. Rob closes his eyes and waves him away. “You should go.”

He can’t see Jesse, but he hears rustling beside him all at once, then feels a hand gripping his forearm, and he knows he’s knelt beside him. He’s never let anyone here see him like this; he hates anyone seeing him like this at all, even his own family, but Jesse’s touch feels like an anchor point, the only thing keeping him moored in the storm.

“Are you crazy? I’m not leaving you like this,” Jesse tells him. He sounds calmer now, and it’s a relief for Rob; one of them needs to be, at least. “Tell me what you need.”

“My desk,” he manages. “Top left drawer. There’s a heart monitor.”

Everything around him sounds muffled, but he’s able to make out the open and close of his desk drawer. Jesse slips it into his hand after a moment, and he straps it around his wrist, fumbling with the band until the other man takes it and slips it through the loops for him, then pulls it tight to secure it. It’s not the most high-tech of solutions, just an old fitness tracker with a heart rate monitor, but it does its job in these situations and lets him know if he does, in fact, need to go to the hospital. At first glance, it doesn’t seem that he’ll need to, which is a step in the right direction, at least.

Jesse is at his side again, right then, taking his hand, as attentive as ever. So good. Better than he deserves.

Not his. Not his.

“What else do you need?” he asks, and Rob swallows.

He needs him to stay. Just once.

“Don’t leave,” he whispers, feeling weak and unbearably small.

“Okay,” Jesse murmurs. He rests their intertwined hands on top of his chest and presses the softest kiss in the world to his upper arm. It makes him want to burst into tears. “Just breathe. Focus on me.”

Jesse moves in closer, caressing the space between his thumb and index finger and murmuring words he can’t make out, but they comfort him regardless. He feels safe in a way he’s never felt during one of these attacks when his own body turns on him in something like an act of revenge for all his mistreatment of it over the years. He is always strong. Steady. Bulletproof. He has to be. He hates showing weakness like this, but he’s never been able to hide much from Jesse anyway, and so he tightens his hold on him. He needs him more than he’s ever admitted to himself—more than he’s ever allowed himself to need anyone. 

That was a mistake, too. Maybe the most fatal of them all.

Jesse squeezes back, whispering, “It’s okay.”

He tries to open his eyes, but the world is a viciously circling whirlpool around him. He closes them instead, but that isn’t much better. His thoughts race as fast as his heartbeat, and all at once, all he can hear is his partner’s voice, like he’s caught in a relentless, vivid nightmare. End it. End it, or I swear to God I’ll tell everyone. He has a family. A fucking family, Rob. End it.

He must tense up, or sob, or both, because Jesse soothes again, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

He sucks in a sharp, burning breath.

No, it’s not. It’s going to break his fucking heart. It’s already started to.

He wants to scream the words at him, but he can’t find his voice, so he just lies there as still as he can manage, focusing on regulating his breathing. It takes about an hour, but eventually, the episode passes, fading away until it’s nothing more than a low hum in his bones. He watches his heart rate drop on the monitor, and the tension in his muscles uncoils bit by bit, his heart unclenching between his ribs like a fist. 

He’ll be shaky for the rest of the day, but he’ll survive, and so finally, he opens his eyes to look over at Jesse, kneeling at his side as he is. He hasn’t so much as budged the entire time they’ve been there. He’s rested his head halfway on his shoulder, with their hands still folded together on his chest. His eyes are tender, watching him closely. There’s a sad smile tugging at his lips, and Rob takes one look at him and feels like breaking down all over again. 

Because he knows how this ends. How it has to end.

Finally, he manages to sit up. Jesse brings him water, which he drinks greedily, and for God knows how long, they just sit there. Eventually, Jesse scoots closer - to embrace or kiss him - and he pulls away, crossing the room to put space between them and leaning against the table.

“Don’t,” he chokes out, breathless. “Touch me. Don’t. You should-” His voice catches in his throat. He wrenches it free with a pained sound, sniffing and wiping the remains of the water from his lips. “You should go.”

“So that’s it?” Jesse demands. “We aren’t even going to talk?”

If he were as rational as he’s always prided himself in being, Rob would tell him no and end it here, without ceremony or sentimentality. It would be better for both of them; a clean break, cold turkey, no matter how much it would hurt. But this break is never going to be clean no matter how they go about it, they both know that, and so he lets out a breath, dragging his eyes up to meet his.

For a while, all they do is look at each other with the same calm resignation of two people staring out across a swath of land after a natural disaster has torn through, surveying the destruction. Rob can’t decide how to proceed, if he should do this quickly, like cauterizing a wound so the healing process can begin. He isn’t sure how to do this at all.

Maybe he doesn’t need to do anything. Maybe all they need to do is sit for a while, draw some form of closure from each others’ presence, and then go their separate ways.

Jesse is the one to speak again after what feels like an eternity. “So. We stop.”

He says it as if it’s simple. Rob has to bite back a dark, sardonic laugh. 

“We stop.”

Jesse looks as devastated as he feels, broken and overflowing with words he wants to say but knows he shouldn’t. He stands and starts to take a step forward, then seems to think better of it and moves back.

“I don’t…” Jesse swallows. “I don’t want to stop.”

Without warning, an irrational sort of fury comes over him. He feels hollow, emotions raw with sheer physical and mental exhaustion. It’s stolen every polite pretense away, and all that he has left for him now is brutal honesty, maybe just plain brutality.

“What’s the alternative?” Rob spits, intent suddenly on hurting him as badly as he can, like throwing stones at a faithful dog that just won’t leave. “What do you think we are, Romeo a-and fucking Juliet? You’re never going to leave your wife. You want to be prime minister one day. You need the perfect smiling family in all the pictures. You need her by your side for that.” He stumbles right then, losing his confidence. Before he can help it, the hurt bleeds into his tone. “Not me. It can’t be me.”

Jesse begins to take a step forward again. “Rob-”

“If he found out, one day your wife will too,” he barrels on. He forces the edge back into his voice, plastering on that look of indifference he’s always worn like warpaint. Robotic. Mechanical. He lets himself become what everyone has always said he is. “We have to end it. There’s no other way.”

Without warning, Jesse crosses the room, looming over him, and Rob raises himself to his full height. Jesse is angry too, now, nostrils flared and eyes burning. He’s so close he can feel each breath he takes, and he knows he should move away, but he can’t seem to manage it.

“Don’t fucking do that. Don’t go cold like that, pretend you don’t care-”

“You’re the one who said you loved me,” Rob forces himself to say. “I never said it back because I don’t.”

It’s a special kind of cruelty. It’s a lie, and he’s always been a lousy liar. Jesse sees through him at once, but the hurt that unfolds onto his features stops him from fighting back at first. The pained look in his eyes pries open the part of Rob that he’s closed off, the part of him that feels. It pulls at its edges, trying to wrestle his resolve free. He beats it back.

He’s already lost everything. Lost his life back home. What’s one more thing? What is this, too? 

He’ll burn it all down around him. It’s no more than he deserves.

“Look, I’m not an idealist like you are. I-I don’t spend all my time living in some fantasy world,” he seethes. “I understand the reality of things. I understand this was only ever a fucking mistake.”

Jesse’s breath hitches as if physically wounded by the words. For a long, long time, they go without speaking. The look in his eyes is wearing Rob down, wheedling its way into his chest and cracking open his ribs, threatening to take up residence inside him. He needs to remove himself from this situation because he doesn’t trust himself when he’s this close, but before he can-

Lips, then. Pressing down on his. Insistent and hungry and not about to be deterred. Jesse grabs him and kisses him as hard as he ever has, more of an assault than a kiss at all, and every movement of his lips is a silent plea - for what, Rob doesn’t know. A plea not to stop? They have to. There is no alternative. They must.

They can’t. He can’t.

Something snaps his resolve in half, and before he can help himself, he’s kissing him back, pulling him closer but never able to get him close enough. It’s a searing kiss, a hopeless one, both drowning in it and gasping for air with the knowledge they’ll be pulled under soon enough. Rob wrenches himself free eventually, but in a moment of weakness, he stays tucked against him, bowing his head slightly so his forehead rests on his chin.

“Sorry,” Jesse pants. “I’m sorry.”

Rob doesn’t move. He doesn’t ask what he’s sorry for. He doesn’t look at him. He hardly even breathes. Somehow, he manages to pull away and sit down on the sofa, trembling faintly. His lips are still burning. Once, it would’ve been a pleasant feeling, but now it scalds like acid. It hurts like hell.

“You should go,” he manages, at last, refusing to look at him.

Jesse dithers. “Rob-”

“Go,” he barks, louder this time. The words are as hollow as a dirge. “Get out. Go.”

He doesn’t look up as he leaves. He doesn’t allow himself a last glance; those belong in the movies, in books, in grand love stories with people who’ve earned them, not in theirs. The door closes and latches behind him, as piercing a sound as a gunshot, and it makes him flinch. Suddenly, he wants to scream, throw something, beat his hands bloody on the wall, but he does none of those things.

He doesn’t allow himself to feel anything at all. If he appears not to care, then he doesn’t. That’s how it works in their world, where appearances are reality. 

If he appears to be something, then he is. He doesn’t care. He never did.

He’s lied so much now that Rob realizes he’s lost his hold on the truth. He’s lied so much that he’ll lie even here, even alone, even to himself. Somehow, no matter how many fucking times he’s done it, he’s never gotten any better.

-

He goes for a run the next morning.

Rob knows perfectly well it won’t do anything to clear his head or offer him any salvation, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself otherwise. His sheets all smell like Jesse. His apartment is haunted by memories of him, and he can’t stay another second inside it. It’s drizzling outside, and the cobbled streets of The Hague glisten beneath his gym shoes, which splash in puddles as he sets off. The early summer air feels heavy and humid when it settles into his lungs. 

He runs for the temporary solace it might provide him, however fleeting. He runs to abuse his body, to cause himself pain as some sort of penance for everything he’s done, as some twisted form of self-flagellation, but there is no God, he knows that, and even if there was, there sure as hell wouldn’t be any mercy on offer for him. 

He runs until every thought and memory of Jesse falls away, until he forgets the look of betrayal on his partner’s face and the text he’d sent to tell him he’d have all his things out of their house by the weekend. He runs until all that occupies his mind is the cramping in his muscles and the screaming ache in his tendons and the sound of his lungs scrambling for air.

For a split second, he wonders if he pushed himself hard enough if his faulty heart would simply give out and kill him. He wonders if that would really be so bad for everyone involved.

He runs until he feels nausea overtake him and kneels on the ground to vomit. He hasn’t eaten anything in more than a day, and all that comes up is bile, singeing his throat and making his eyes water. He wipes his mouth off once his stomach has settled and raises his head, finding himself staring up at the Ridderzaal in the inner courtyard of the Binnenhof. The building looms over him with something that feels like disapproval, imposing in its harsh Gothic facade. Telling him to get out. Go. 

He’d made his way there without even realizing it. Something had drawn him. Someone.

It’s early enough that there aren’t many people around, though the few milling about give him a strange look, and he lowers his head to keep them from recognizing him. They don’t stop to see if he needs help, and he figures it’s just as well. No one can help him anyway.

He stares up at the building for a while, cowering on his knees as if prostrating himself before an angry god. He tries to force himself not to think, to block everything out, but thoughts of Jesse worm their way in unbidden like they always do. They’re like a cancer, regrowing no matter how many times he’s tried to cut them out. He can’t will them away, and before long, he’s given himself over to them in his weakness. The second he does, a terrible realization dawns on him.

They aren’t ever going to be able to keep away from each other.

Their parties are coalition partners. They work far too closely to avoid one another, and he knows with the utmost certainty that if he’s around Jesse, he won’t be able to stay away from him. It’ll never work. They’ll try their best, do a perfunctory dance around each other for a while, but something will give eventually. This has to end forever for both their sakes, for the sake of Jesse’s future, his family. His dream. He needs to strike the killing blow.

He knows, as he kneels there, what he has to do.

Chapter Text

“You’re resigning.”

Sigrid looks up from the letter in her hands with a stare as iron-clad as it’s ever been. It isn’t a question, and so at first, he doesn’t answer. Seated in front of her desk in her office, Rob only nods feebly and lowers his eyes without a word.

“You’re not serious,” she continues, and at last, he sighs.

“I’m afraid I am.” 

He can see Sigrid turn that over in her mind a few times, letting it sink in, before she asks the question he’s been dreading: “Why?”

Exhausted as he is by the events of the past few weeks, Rob realizes he can’t find the words to explain. He’s rarely caught off guard, always quick on his feet, but despite his best efforts, he’s never gotten good at talking his way around a question. Giving non-answers, as Jesse would say. He remembers when Jesse had coached him on that, and his stomach sours.

When he doesn’t respond, Sigrid suggests a response for him, “I heard about you and your partner.”

“Yes,” he croaks, leaving it at that.

Discussing it any further is too painful. She seems to sense that, and they sit in silence for a minute as Sigrid finishes scanning the letter and sets it down neatly before her. Then, she folds her hands and leans toward him, looking him over in a way that is worryingly analytical. He’s scared of what she might find in his face that he isn’t even aware he’s letting on.

“We all thought it was a joke. You and Jesse Klaver. But it wasn’t, was it?”

If he weren’t running on empty, Rob might find it in himself to be horrified that she knows. Somehow, though, he isn’t surprised. No one here pays attention to things - only Sigrid, silent and stoic and watching everyone around her as closely as a sentinel.

He doesn’t answer, but that is answer enough. Instead, he just asks, “How long have you known?”

“Months. I started paying closer attention to you when you became so distracted during the formation. I noticed you looking at him during debates. Leaving meetings right after he would. Then there was the holiday party when all you did was stare at him. One of our policy advisors told me that he’d always see you going to each other’s offices. I’m surprised you think you were subtle.”

Sigrid’s stare remains unwaveringly even. She is still calm, her mind churning in silence like a swan’s feet paddling furiously beneath the surface of a pond. He wouldn’t blame her for being disgusted by him, but she isn’t; if anything, she just seems frustrated. Finally, Rob shakes his head and lets his shoulders sag.

“I can’t be here anymore, Sigrid.”

She rises up in her chair, incensed. “You’re young, Rob. You have a bright political future. You’re a rising star in our party. Once my time as leader is up, you’re the natural successor. You’d throw all that away because of him? I thought you were sensible. It’s a waste of your potential, and it’s an insult to anyone who’s ever believed in you-”

“It’s not just that,” he murmurs. His tone is morose but steady. He sounds dead inside, he thinks. Hollow shill, indeed. “I’m burned out. I’m tired of it all. The backstabbing. The… the public scrutiny. Nothing is ever genuine. It’s all a big performance. And I knew that, coming here.” He pauses and looks down at his hands. They feel cold and foreign, like extensions of himself he doesn’t recognize. “But I don’t want to do it anymore.”

He thinks for a moment that she’ll continue to push or give him a verbal lashing for being so foolish, but she doesn’t. Sigrid reads any situation with the mastery only a diplomat can have, and so she leans back in her seat, looking at him closely for a long time.

“There’s nothing I can say to change your mind,” she finally concludes.

“No.” He gives her an abortive smile, which ends up looking like more of a grimace. “You deserve a better deputy. I’ll come up with a list of names for my replacement.”

He can see her mind shift into another mode, at that, already running through a mental checklist of their members and flagging those who might be suitable. She won’t need a list, he knows that. Probably she already has someone in mind. It’s the way Sigrid is, ten steps ahead of the next-closest player.

He’ll miss her more than anything.

“When?” she asks, her mind already shifting to timelines, never one to linger long in the past or present.

“I vacate my seat at the end of the week. I haven’t announced yet. I wanted to tell you first.”

Warmth blooms in her eyes, mingling with the first hint of sadness he’s seen from her since he stepped into her office.

“I’ll miss you,” she says.

He tries to summon up a smile again. They’ve always understood each other, him and Sigrid. He knows she’s lost faith in him over time, as his focus drifted and his loyalties went askew, but she always gave second chances and looked for solutions instead of trying to push him out. He owes her more than he can ever repay, and he knows that she’ll lead their party in a way he never would’ve been capable of doing. She’s stronger than he is, more resolute and strategic.

He never made a better choice than standing aside for her.

“I’ll miss you too,” he tells her, meaning it.

-

The news breaks midday on a Tuesday.

The D66 social media accounts are the ones who put it out first, followed immediately by an official statement to the press. It’s framed ambiguously enough. ‘Stepping down to pursue other endeavors’ is the line their comms team settles on, and he thinks it suits. The statement assures he’ll always be valued as a friend and ally of the party. Someone tucks in a line about him continuing to volunteer on their election campaigns, which he thinks was probably a nudge from Sigrid. He can’t help but smile.

He can only expect that Jesse will find his way to him eventually, and so he sets up shop in his office, beginning to pack things away into a few cardboard boxes his staff had retrieved for him. All the plaques and awards he’s accumulated over the years feel like flimsy accomplishments. What has he achieved, really? He remembers his conversation with Jesse about legacy, and he wonders what his will be. 

He won’t be remembered, probably. Once, that would’ve bothered him, but not anymore. If he improved even one life, eased one person’s burden, showed one person that their sexuality has no bearing on their potential to succeed, then that counts for something. He refuses to believe it doesn’t.

He hears Jesse before he sees him, storming down the hall toward his open office door and demanding to know if anyone has seen him. Finally, he appears in his doorway, hair a windswept mess, flustered and out of breath as if he’d run the entire way from his office. They’ve danced around each other for weeks now without speaking, and it makes Rob tense reflexively just to see him.

“You’re resigning,” Jesse says as he all but slams the door behind him, wild-eyed and panicked.

An eerie sense of calm comes over him. He nods and sets the award he’s holding in the box on the table. 

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s not for me anymore,” he mumbles, continuing to pack the box. “Politics. I’m tired of it. I’ve been tired longer than I can remember. And I-” His voice catches in his throat. It takes him a moment to wrestle it free. “I can’t be around you. I can’t see you every day. It hurts too much. One day, we’d slip up. We can’t stay away from each other, you know that.”

He dares to glance at him, finally, and Jesse looks anguished, utterly devastated, eyes wide and brows knit together. He lowers his own eyes quickly before the sight can chip away at his resolve. 

“So one of us has to go,” he continues, “and it can’t be you. You’re going to be prime minister one day. This is the only way.”

Jesse makes his way over, standing so close that he has no choice but to stop what he’s doing and turn his attention to him. It’s painful to look at him, but he does anyway, stilling the tremble in his hands, that instinct to reach for him. It’s an old habit that hasn’t died yet, though he’s sure over time it will. He hopes, at least.

“You didn’t tell me. I had to find out from my fucking staff. You should’ve talked to me first,” he bursts out, gesturing with one hand in short, brusque movements. “We could’ve come up with some kind of plan to… to-”

“It wouldn’t have been enough,” Rob cuts him off gently, calm and level-headed. Resigned, more than anything. Jesse is fighting a battle he’s already surrendered. “You know it wouldn’t. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“You’re damn right I would have. You have a promising career. With the way D66 has gained seats? One day you could’ve been prime minister.”

“Yes, well,” he demurs as he picks up a plaque, reads it, then sets it in the box as well, “that’s your dream, not mine.”

“Don’t,” Jesse urges as he moves in closer. He shakes his head, still breathless. “Don’t do it.”

“I already submitted my resignation to Bergkamp. I issued a statement. The media knows. It’s over, Jesse.” He flattens his lips into a line. “It’s done.”

Jesse sinks down numbly into one of his chairs as the realization sweeps over him in stages of grief. He’d been in denial coming here, and he watches the rest flicker behind his eyes: anger, bargaining, sorrow, then a grim, flat sort of acceptance. Rob takes a seat on the top of the table, running his eyes over him without a word. 

He loves him so much he doesn’t know how to handle it. He hardly ever admits it so openly, even to himself, but there’s no use denying it now. He fell slowly at first, he thinks, so slowly he hadn’t recognized what was happening.

Slowly, then all at once. Until there was no going back. Until it brought them here.

As they sit there, he has no doubt that this is the right thing to do. Like a wolf with its leg caught in a trap, gnawing off the limb to survive. It’s a sacrifice worth making, no matter the temporary agony it might cause. It’ll pass, as all things do.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Jesse mumbles, resting his head in his hands briefly, then carding a hand through his curls. “Not for me. I…”

He drifts off, losing hold of whatever words had been on his tongue. Rob lowers his eyes and gulps, feeling a lump form like a jagged rock in his throat.

“If we were caught, and it ever got out, it’d ruin your career. And you might not at first, but you’d resent me for it one day.”

“It would be worth it,” Jesse asserts. It seems almost as if some willfully naive part of him still believes he can talk him out of this, somehow. “Being with you. It would.”

Rob gives him a sad, pitying smile. He wants, more than anything, for Jesse to achieve his dreams, even if it means standing aside for him to do it. He can see his vision for their country, and it’s bigger than the two of them: equality, fairness, a healthy planet for the generations that will come after them. He wants that just as much as he does. 

He’d never dream of standing in the way.

“No, it wouldn’t.”

-

The farewell the chamber holds for him on his last day is brief but fawning. Sigrid gives a speech, along with a few other members of D66. Though some outgoing members give their own remarks, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what he would say, in all honesty, disillusioned with the place as he is. He wouldn’t be able to stand looking out into the crowd and seeing Jesse’s face.

He avoids looking at him at all costs, in fact, and the other man seems to know to do him the same courtesy. After Bergkamp adjourns them, a throng of people come up to his seat to wish him well, shaking his hand and asking what his next adventure will be. He tells them the truth for once, which is that he doesn’t know, and laughs and lies and hides behind the mask he’s come to wear like a second skin.

Even Thierry comes to send him off. He almost thinks he sees a tear in his eye.

He stays in the chamber until everyone else has left and they’ve dimmed the lights, leaving only the rostrum fully lit. It’s eerie like this, too peaceful in a room that rarely ever knows peace. Not knowing why, he makes his way down to his old seat in the front row, where he’d sat as party leader and Jesse had sat beside him, peering up at the front of the room in sullen silence.

Next week the Kamer will gather here again without him. Someone will stand there and speak. A new body will fill his seat. The issues will be debated, the same tired disagreements hashed out ad nauseam. His departure changes nothing; he’s just a drop in the ocean of this place, a cog in a machine easily replaced. It’s all any of them are in the end. He thinks of all the egos rife in the chamber, all the MPs and ministers and all their self-importance, and wants to laugh. 

It’s funny, he thinks. Whenever he closes a chapter of his life like this, whenever there is such a stark demarcation of the before and after, he always half-expects there will be some kind of fanfare or recognition from the universe. But there’s no cinematic fade to black for him—no frozen frame and roll of the credits. The pace of the Kamer is relentless and unsentimental. 

Soon, he’ll be nothing more than a headline in yesterday’s news cycle. In a strange way, he looks forward to it.

He feels the air shift, and he doesn’t have to look behind him to know Jesse is there. He hadn’t spoken to him after, fleeing the chamber like something was chasing him, but Rob had known without needing to ask that he’d come back. They always seem to end up back here, side by side. He slips into his old seat across the aisle from him without a word, and for a time, neither of them speak.

“I remember when I first came here. When I first stepped inside the chamber. I was so happy,” Rob pipes up finally, talking more to himself than him.

He thinks abruptly of old friends, old mentors. The old party leader Pechtold, whose place he had taken. He remembers when he’d handed him the gavel in front of a tsunami of camera flashes. It’d felt heavier than he thought it would, and the burden never grew lighter over time. He was almost glad to hand it over to Sigrid when the time came.

“Pechtold said he knew it was time for him to go when he stopped feeling the magic of this place,” he continues. “I know what he meant now.”

Jesse sighs, which prompts Rob to glance over at him. He is leaning back in his chair, arms crossed with one hand over his mouth. He looks hopeless in a way he’s only ever seen him once or twice before. He always has hope; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have survived here as long as he has, but it all seems to have been wrung out of him now like a rag.

“Don’t leave me alone with these people,” he mutters. The words ring hollow, echoing across the empty, cavernous hall. “Rutte, Sigrid. Hoekstra. I don’t want to work with any of them if you’re not here. I hate all of them.” He pauses and locks eyes with him. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

“The center has to hold. It’s up to you to keep the coalition together now,” he tells him with sudden vehemence. “We got what we wanted. Promise me you won’t let it fall apart.”

Without hesitating, Jesse nods. “I promise.”

“Promise me you won’t give up, either. On everything we dreamed of. You have to accomplish it for both of us.” He pauses, then grins sadly. “Don’t forget about me when you become prime minister.”

“We lost half our seats in the election. We’re just as far from that as we were when I took over leadership. Even I’m not that much of an idealist.”

“You still can,” Rob says with certainty. He knows in his bones, somehow, in a way he’s only ever known a few things before. In the same way he knows he loves him, and always will. “You will.”

They exchange a small smile across the aisle. 

Then, Jesse asks, “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really done anything besides politics. I guess the first thing I’ll do is sleep. Maybe for a week. Or two. I’m tired.” He lets out a breath and raises his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m just so tired.”

Time passes. The hour is drawing later, but neither of them budges from their seat, and so finally, Rob looks over at him again.

“Don’t you need to get home?”

It’s a leading question. Jesse picks up on his meaning at once. The lie rolls off his tongue easily; one of the last he’ll have to tell, he thinks.

“I told her I have meetings in Amsterdam today and tomorrow.”

They have tonight at least, then. Perhaps it’d be less painful if they just left it here, but that wouldn’t feel right, Rob thinks. 

There’s only one place for them to go: back to the start.

-

The air between them is somber when they cross the threshold into his flat. On any normal night, he’d be walking on air, but Rob is aware everything they do - take off their shoes, slide off their jackets, loosen their ties - is the last time they’ll do it together. The place feels even more closed-off and unwelcoming than it usually does, though it’s never felt that way to him with Jesse there before. It’s never been his home, but he always made it feel like it was, somehow.

Rob takes a look around at the counter, the sofa, the place near the door where he’d kissed him for the first time, where it all began. It’s only fitting it should end here, too. No matter how great their triumphs or defeats, they always find themselves back here.

They don’t say much. Rob isn’t sure there’s much left to say. Jesse leads him to bed and curls up behind him, tangling their legs together and fucking him from the side. The pleasure drowns everything out, if only for a few minutes. His thoughts go silent behind his eyes. He lets the sound of Jesse’s breathing wash over him, the burning warmth of his hands, the feeling of his curls brushing the back of his neck. Jesse presses his moaning mouth to his shoulder and doesn’t let up, thrusting into him with measured strokes. The feeling overwhelms Rob to the point of being painful, too much for him to take.

He comes with a sound like a sob and only realizes he’s crying when Jesse nudges his chin back toward him enough to kiss the tears off his cheeks. He stays inside him for a while afterward, just holding him. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so close to another human being before in his life. He can feel his heart beating where they’re joined, locked together in the still of the night.

Eventually, Rob pulls away and turns to face him, tucking himself against his chest. He can feel himself drifting off but fights it, remembering their first night together when he’d woken up alone. He’s terrified of that happening again. 

He’s so scared of losing him. He’s scared of what he’ll become without him.

“Go to sleep,” Jesse soothes as if he can sense what he’s thinking. The other man buries his nose into his hair and tightens his grip on him. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Too tired to do much else, Rob hums in agreement, closing his eyes, breathing him in, and holding him in his lungs. All he can hear is the sound of Jesse’s heartbeat in his chest, the ebb and flow of blood, the rhythmic opening and closing of muscle. So beautifully alive, so steady. So unlike his own. He falls asleep to its rhythm, swept beneath the surface by the undertow of his pulse.

He could live the rest of his life and die like this, and he thinks he would be happy.

-

He keeps his promise.

Rob awakes early in the morning before the sun is up, rolling over and finding Jesse there dozing peacefully on his back. For a long time, he lies on his stomach and watches him in the gathering grey dawn. After all the nights they’ve spent together, which have admittedly been few, he’s never awoken before him and had the chance to do this. He looks younger, he thinks. More boyish with his features at rest. He’s mesmerized by the rise and fall of his chest, the rattle of sleep in his breath. He stays silent, hardly daring to draw his own breath in case it wakes him. He wishes he could stop time right here, hold it still forever.

Deep in slumber like this, for an hour or two, he belongs to him and no one else. He wants to remember him this way. 

Not in their hasty, stolen moments. Not in their furtive gazes across the chamber. Not hidden away in darkness. Like this.

The first rays of sunlight filter through his window like intruders. They feel as cold as ice. He doesn’t take his eyes off of him as they flood inside; he tries to memorize how he looks right here to have something to remember him by because once this is over, he won’t have anything else. They never exchanged gifts, gave each other tokens of affection. It would’ve been stupid. Dangerous. 

Once this is over, it’ll be like it never happened at all.

He focuses on the tempo of his breathing and commits the curve of his lips to memory. He’s never looked at him for so long before, and he finds himself noticing small details he’s somehow missed: the faint wrinkles on his forehead, a mole on the side of his neck, the delicate curl of his eyelashes. The light falls on his face and lends him a shimmering golden outline. He seems almost to glow, for a moment.

He loves him. He loves him so much, and he’s never told him. Maybe now, with the end in sight, it’s better that he didn’t.

Jesse begins to stir right then. His eyelids flutter open, then squint shut at the assault of daylight. When he looks at him for the first time, for the briefest of seconds, Rob can tell he’s caught in that blissful liminal space just between sleeping and waking before he’s remembered where they are or why they’re here. He almost, almost smiles; he can see his lips begin to perk upward, but it falls off his face not long after when reality comes flooding back.

Still, after a moment, Jesse murmurs, “Good morning.”

He doesn’t say anything back. He feels like he should want to cry, but he doesn’t; he’s done all his crying already, and he has nothing left to give. No words, either. There is nothing either of them can say to change things, and it may be against their nature, but for once, they don’t bother with them. Rob just takes hold of his hand and kisses the inside of his wrist, then curls his fingers shut and presses his lips to the back of it, too.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse says as he does, and he furrows his brow. 

“For what?”

“That I can’t be what you need,” he tells him. “That I can’t leave her.”

He doesn’t answer at first. He leaves their fingers laced together, tightening his grip with something like desperation.

“In another life, maybe,” Rob finally whispers, a non sequitur that needs no explanation. An answer to a question that was never asked.

Another life. Another timeline in another world. If they’d fallen in love sooner. If things had been different. If. Rob wonders who the idealist is now, the dreamer. Over time, Jesse made him into one, made him want to believe in every wild possibility, every grandiose, improbable dream. He made him stupid. 

He made him a fool.

Jesse sits up slightly, inching closer. “One day. One day when all this is over, and I’m not in parliament anymore-”

Rob shakes his head. He knows a lie when he hears one. They’re politicians; they lie for a living. Have they really grown so accustomed to it that they’ll do it even here with each other? Once you play a part for so long, it occurs to him, it can fuse to you, become who you really are. Maybe he’s fallen in love with a persona. A character. Someone who never really existed at all.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Rob rasps in a voice still hoarse with sleep, putting the idea to rest.

An alarm sounds on Jesse’s phone right then. Rob winces, watching as he reaches over and looks at the screen.

“I have to go,” he says dolefully, and Rob nods.

He doesn’t rise with him, instead propping himself up with a pillow and watching numbly from the bed as he dresses. He wants to ask him to stay, but he did that once to no avail, and he doesn’t expect it will be any different now. Doing it anyway would just be prolonging the inevitable. Better to rip the bandage off and let the hurting begin.

But first-

“I love you too.”

It feels like a helpless outburst. It’s a plea, broken and futile, but he has to say it; he’ll spend the rest of his life regretting it if he doesn’t. It makes Jesse go still at once. It looks like it breaks something deep inside him. There is a faint sheen of tears in his eyes, a flicker of longing beneath them. He’s in more agony than he’s ever seen him, but still, he doesn’t make a move to come back to the bed, and Rob realizes with a sinking feeling that the words have come too late to make a difference - if they ever would’ve at all.

He’s supposed to be the realist. Somehow, still, he’d hoped for the impossible.

“I love you,” Jesse says. The words drag on his tongue like dry skin snagging on cloth. He opens his mouth again, then falters. “I…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He leaves it as a dangling conversation, an ellipses. He lets it die and disappears without a backward glance, and all at once, Rob is hit with the silence, left only with the ghost of words unsaid.

Chapter Text

The press speculates about his departure in that vaguely offensive and ill-informed way only the press is capable of.

Burned himself out, they say. Worked too hard and went down in flames, which isn’t entirely wrong, Rob has to admit. Nothing more than a pretty face with no real substance, others opine. A partisan puppet. Sigrid Kaag’s lapdog.

The more sympathetic political analysts lament a promising career extinguished. Such a shame, they write. Such a waste of talent. 

The side of the Internet that despises him - the Thierry Baudet’s and Geert Wilders’ of the world - is downright vicious. No surprise a kanker homo couldn’t hack it. Waste of space. Better off with a dick in his mouth than a seat in parliament. He’s no stranger to the hatred, but it still stings, and this time it is light years crueler than ever before.

Still, those comments aren’t the ones that bother him, not really. The ones that bother him are from his community, lamenting the resignation of a gay MP and a loss of representation in the Kamer. He begins to feel, over time, that he’s let them down, and that is by far the worst feeling of all.

But he rises in the morning like he always will. He reads the comments and continues on because they only have as much control over him as he allows them to. On his last day in The Hague before turning over the keys to his flat, he stands on the edge of the lake, staring across at the Binnenhof. When he first arrived here, he had thought it looked so beautiful, and over the years, it came to feel like a prison. Now, it holds no power over him anymore.

He is free. Yet when he returns to his empty home and sits alone in the deafening silence, he’s acutely aware of the price he’s paid. 

-

Years pass.

It takes Rob a long time to unlearn all the behaviors he’d picked up while in office: feigning indifference, hiding behind a mask, plastering on a pleasant, simpering look regardless of the occasion. Over time, he thinks he became more sound bite than human being. He realizes he’s forgotten who he is with all the political theatrics stripped away, so used to fitting himself into whatever mold was necessary at the time.

He’s always thought the term soul-searching is a ridiculous cliche, but he spends time doing it. He picks up a few hobbies, which all end up being short-lived. He never fully commits to any of them. He still runs every morning like he’s running from something, and he is: the life he left behind in The Hague, all the people there - and one in particular. 

Jesse is always right behind him, dogging his footsteps. Like a phantom limb, he never gets used to being without him.

The only way he’ll survive is by cutting him off completely, though, and so that is what Rob does. He blocks his social media posts from his feed and deletes his number, but he won’t deny that in moments of weakness, he checks in on him. He does well over the years, as far as he can tell. He seems happy, at least for appearance’s sake.

He develops a very distinct type: men with curls, slanted grins, and sweet, dark eyes. He embarks on a series of ill-fated relationships that his heart is never fully in and ends them all because he knows it isn’t right to string anyone along. He spends too much time in clubs and bars and dating apps, getting drunk, taking someone home, and imagining another face, another set of eyes, another voice. None of them are ever half as tender as Jesse. None of them ever mean half as much.

In the years after, he works as a government affairs consultant, then for another stretch at ProRail. He moves wherever work wants him and takes advantage of his freedom, however lonely it is. He loses himself in the hazy coffee shops and winding canals of Amsterdam, the soaring skyscrapers and neon-drenched clubs of Rotterdam. He lives in Paris for a time, which isn’t unintentional. He never settles down; he never feels settled either. He throws himself into work, hoping one day his heart will follow, but it never does.

He only returns to The Hague once.

-

All the polls predict a historic GreenLeft surge. 

It’s taken seven years and two election cycles, but Jesse has positioned them well and recouped their losses. Rob tries to avoid them but catches a number of his campaign ads on social media despite his best efforts. In some of them, he appears in nature - in a forest, on a beach - and in others, he’s walking in The Hague or speaking to someone on the street with that quiet, easy confidence of his. In all of them, Jesse has that same intense focus and passion that he fell in love with, selling the vision for their country they’d dreamt up together.

He’s always been the moral compass of the Kamer, beating back the tide of far-right populism and fighting to save the planet, but Rob realizes he’s grown into something more. He gains the gravitas that comes with age and becomes more pragmatic too. He learns how to message his grand ideals without seeming so much like an idealist. ‘A brighter dawn for the Netherlands,’ is the promise he runs on, capturing the heart of a nation.

Election season has always felt electric to Rob, a time of year unlike any other when every intern, staffer, and politician across the country forgoes sleep and survives purely off of caffeinated beverages in the run-up to the polls opening. He volunteers in Amsterdam for D66, handing out pamphlets in the street, but at the ballot box, he votes GreenLeft. In the back of his mind, he remembers a conversation he’d had once with Sigrid about party loyalty. 

Like she always is, he realizes she was right.

He watches the results come in on the sofa with his dog and a glass of wine, his only two faithful companions over the years. GreenLeft picks up ten seats, and by the end of the night, they’ve usurped D66’s place as the largest party. Jesse’s victory speech is bombastic, given to a crowd of hundreds cheering his name and holding GreenLeft banners. The applause is thunderous. He looks the happiest he’s ever been, illuminated by half a hundred spotlights, and he shines brighter than any of them.

Rob considers calling or texting. He has his number memorized, even though he deleted it years ago, but ultimately he decides to do one better.

The swearing-in of a new Tweede Kamer after the election is always a media spectacle. Seats in the gallery are usually reserved for press, members’ families, and people of importance, but Sigrid pulls some strings and gets him in too. It’s bizarre to experience the place as an outsider for the first time. Rob recognizes just as many MPs as he doesn’t, and not many seem to recognize him. It’s been long enough that he’s faded into relative obscurity, only a footnote in the Kamer’s history, but that is fine with him.

He didn’t come here for that, after all.

He watches from above as Jesse is sworn in as MP, fresh off his victory. He won’t officially become prime minister until after a coalition is formed, but a hush falls over the crowd regardless when he rises. His back is turned to the audience, but he can hear his voice ring out into the chamber as clear and strong as a bell.

“I swear that in order to be appointed member of the States-General, I have not promised or given, directly or indirectly, any gifts or presents to any person under any name or pretext whatsoever. I swear that in order to do or refrain from doing anything whatsoever in this office, I have not accepted and will not accept, directly or indirectly, any promises or presents from anyone whomsoever. I swear allegiance to the King, to the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and to the Constitution. I swear that I will faithfully perform all the duties which the office lays upon me. So help me, Almighty God.”

Applause washes over the room, and it takes Rob a moment to remember to clap with them. Part of him had wondered if, over the years, the feeling of being in his presence would have changed or the excitement dimmed, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s only grown. It feels like ice melting inside him, something long-forgotten and hibernating beginning to stir. His oath completed, Jesse turns to look behind him, holding up a hand to acknowledge the crowd above and nodding with a smile.

He thinks for a moment he might see him, but there are so many faces, and he’s just one more in the sea of them. Jesse’s eyes don’t fall on him. After a moment, he takes his seat again, and they proceed on to the next MP. He can’t find it in himself to be disappointed. He understands.

He has too many other people to look at now, though once he’d used to look at him like he was the only person in the world.

He leaves the chamber after the session concludes and comes to stand in the crowd lining the lobby, waiting for the MPs to emerge. He jostles his way to the front and waits as they make their way out of the doors. He sees Sigrid first, who acknowledges him with a nod and a small smile. Then comes Wilders, who still looks as cantankerous as ever, and Thierry Baudet, who is a party of one now but somehow continues to get himself elected. One by one, they all flood out, new members and old, and then, finally, out steps Jesse.

He’s wearing a firmly pressed navy suit and tie. Rob can’t help but notice his suits seem to fit him better these days. He hasn’t lost his boyish charm, the mischief in his smile. Reporters flock to him at once, shoving microphones and cameras in his face, asking him what his plans for the coalition are, who his preferred partners will be, what his first priority is. He’s never looked so energized, so centered in himself, and he’s in the middle of speaking with a reporter when he passes him.

Time slows for a second. Rob assumes he won’t see him here either, not when he has so many other things demanding his attention, but as luck would have it, Jesse happens to glance over at the right moment, their gazes aligning.

Something passes between them. For a second, everything is perfectly still. Jesse’s eyes fill with recognition. He freezes mid-sentence, opening his mouth as if to say something to him, but before he can, he’s swept away by the tide of journalists, staffers, and security.

Jesse looks back at him, however. He holds his gaze for as long as possible, and Rob gives him a nod, saying with it everything he can’t say aloud.

Congratulations. It’s your dream. You deserve it. I’m proud of you.

And it never would’ve happened if you were still mine.

-

Jesse Klaver lasts three years as prime minister. 

He’s always been too polarizing a figure to survive for a decade like Rutte. In the end, he’s toppled by a no-confidence vote following a minor cabinet scandal, which the opposition and his coalition partners use as more of an excuse than anything to get rid of him. Recently divorced and fallen from grace, he looks devastated during the interviews Rob watches in the days that follow.

The media coverage is just as brutal. Jesse Klaver: once a rising star, now a washed-up windbag, one of the many op-eds ridicules. All he’s ever done is be a politician, a woman they interview on the street sneers. He’s been around too long. He’s out of touch. It’s time for new leadership.

He considers calling or texting then, too, but in the end, he doesn’t need to. One morning two weeks after the vote, he receives a text from a number he’d long ago forced himself to delete. A text he’s waited over a decade for.

I want to see you. I’ll come to you. Just tell me where.

-

It’s past midnight when he arrives at the Lange Vijverberg, but they’d agreed the later, the better.

Rob tucks his hands into the pockets of his black peacoat and stands for a while on the bank of the lake, looking over at the Binnenhof in silence. It feels like such a mystery to him now, a relic of a past life. Sometimes he wonders if he dreamed it all. The facade is bathed in golden lights that cast their glow out onto the water, turning it into a molten puddle of deep blue and yellow. In the distance, skyscrapers tower over the aged building, the modern world encroaching on the old. The Hague is alive, a hub of politics and policy. He can feel its humming in his bones. 

It’s early spring and still chilly after dark. Rob shivers when an icy breeze whips through, winding his scarf around his neck as he takes a seat on a nearby bench facing the water.

A dark figure in an overcoat lingers in his periphery, then, lit from behind by the streetlamps. It settles down into the space beside him. He doesn’t startle at its approach. 

He’s been waiting a long, long time.

Rob doesn’t have to look over to know it’s him; the hit of adrenaline that spreads through his veins is enough. There’s a thrill he always got from his presence that he’s been chasing ever since, but he never could manage to find anything quite like it. The feeling floods back the moment he opens his mouth, exactly as he’d remembered it.

“Hi,” Jesse greets.

Rob breaks into a smile. “Hi.”

All the time, all the pain, all the years between them, and being at his side still feels as natural as breathing. He looks at him for a while without speaking, and Jesse takes the opportunity to do the same. He’s older, of course, but still gorgeous. He’s aged well, all things considered. There are more flecks of grey in his curls, but Rob has no room to talk because he’s also gone increasingly grey around the edges. There’s no helping it in their line of work. Jesse still carries himself with that same determination, though there are lines around his mouth, his eyes, and deeper ones patterning his forehead.

They’re older but not wiser. If they were wiser, he thinks, they probably wouldn’t be here.

“You look good,” Jesse tells him at last. 

“So do you,” he replies. “Your hair hasn’t fallen out.”

He tilts his head back and laughs. “I was always afraid of that.”

“I know.” Rob pauses. He can’t stop looking at him. He’s afraid if he looks away, he’ll vanish into thin air like a dream. “I remember.”

He remembers everything. As he sits there, it plays like a film behind his eyes: their first night together; their plot to take charge of the formation; the December evening when he first realized he loved him; their nights in Paris when they both knew there was no way out. It only lasted nine months, but somehow he remembers it all more clearly than he remembers the past ten years.

“I was sorry to hear about the vote,” he remarks, and Jesse scowls, leaning forward and clasping his gloved hands.

“Those bastards. Even D66 voted against me. My closest coalition partner.”

“If I’d been in charge, they wouldn’t have. I would’ve stood by you until the end.”

Jesse gives him a rueful grin. “Well, evidently, they don’t feel that same loyalty.”

“Are you staying on as MP?” 

“Maybe,” Jesse sniffs, going a bit red from the cold. Rob can hear the weariness in his voice, see it in the set of his jaw and the way he holds his shoulders. “Not as party leader, though. It’s time for someone younger to take the reins. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

Rob frowns. “You took GreenLeft from a minor party with four seats to being the party of the prime minister. You devoted your life to it. That’s not overstaying your welcome.”

“If only they felt that way too. Now I am to them what Rutte used to be to us: a dinosaur,” Jesse quips, then looks over at him closely, so much so it feels almost as if he’s touching him. “I wish I could’ve had you in my cabinet. We would’ve been able to do so much together.”

“I know,” Rob concedes with a nod and crosses his legs. “I voted for you, you know.”

It’s difficult to catch Jesse off guard, but that seems to do it. “Did you?”

“How could I not? Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve voted GreenLeft since I resigned.”

It’s more than a vote, he knows. It means far more to Jesse than that. That was part of why he’d done it; it was a smoke signal sent up into the sky when he couldn’t contact him, a message in a bottle thrown out to sea, all words he couldn’t say marked into a box on a ballot to propel him toward his dream.

“Well, I’m glad you finally saw the light,” Jesse jokes, then grows serious. “Thank you.”

They go quiet for a while, looking at each other without a word. Rob hardly feels the cold because of the look in his eyes, that look he’s missed, the one he spent so many nights dreaming of and searching for in others. It puts him on edge as much as it sets him at ease, that pleasantly unsettled, truly alive feeling he’d forgotten how much he missed. 

“Where is it you’re living now?” Jesse asks, breaking the silence. “Amsterdam?”

He nods. “I moved there for work. How did you know?”

“I’ve tried to keep track over the years. No wedding ring?”

Jesse glances over at his hand where it rests on his knee, suddenly. Rob smiles at the distinct lack of subtlety, then figures that there’s no need for it anymore.

“If you’ve been keeping track of me, you already know the answer,” he teases, then becomes somber all at once. “No. I haven’t, since us. I tried, but I never wanted to. Not really.” He swallows, unsure how to broach the topic. “I saw the news about your divorce.”

He lets out a sigh. “She could tell I didn’t love her anymore, and she grew to feel the same. It was amicable. I still see the kids every weekend.”

The words echo in the night: the knowledge that there is no barrier between them now. Nothing stopping them. It makes his pulse come faster beneath his skin, but he’s learned to control himself better over the years, and so Rob centers himself, rising to stand and making his way over to the water, where he comes to a stop on the edge along the quay. It would’ve felt like running once, but now they both know it’s an invitation to follow. 

Jesse does.

“It was always my dream, being prime minister,” he muses distantly as he takes his place by his side. “I gave up so much for it. Worked so hard. But I think sometimes, wanting something is more enjoyable than actually having it. And knowing what it’s like, now…” He glances over at him. “I’d give it all up if it meant having you for the last ten years instead.”

“You don’t mean that,” Rob says softly, but one look at him, wide-eyed and genuine, is all it takes for him to know he does.

A moment passes, and Jesse changes course. “Do you miss it?”

He doesn’t have to ask to know what he means. The Binnenhof looms over them across the lake, stately and imposing. Things are simpler outside the insular world of politics. He’d lost himself there, and not in a good way. He became someone he barely recognized. Someone he barely liked, sometimes. Even if he could go back, he isn’t sure he would.

“Sometimes,” he tells him, tucking his hands into his coat pockets. “Most of the time, no. I missed you more than anything.”

“I know,” Jesse undertones. Rob feels the want practically seeping out of him like water spilling over the top of a levee. “I missed you too.”

“What were you going to say the morning you left?” he asks all at once. “You started to say something. I’ve always wondered.”

Jesse lowers his eyes. “I was going to say I’d never stop loving you. But it felt like too much. I thought it would hurt you to hear. And it was… it was stupid, anyway.”

He gulps, and Rob can see something open itself up behind his eyes: an old emotion buried alive but still breathing. He can see that he wants to move in closer but doesn’t seem certain how to go about it, and Rob wonders if they’ve fallen out of step with each other. If too much time has passed. If he can’t go back to this, either, no matter how badly he wants to.

“But I never did,” Jesse continues, eyes flicking up timidly to meet his. “I never stopped thinking about you. The only times I ever really felt alive were when we were together. And I barely even remember all the years since then because I spent so much time thinking about you, in every place I ever was. In every moment. I was never… there. Not really.” He pauses. His curls shift in the breeze. “Not without you.”

Rob turns away almost in an act of self-preservation. He doesn’t know why. Because it’s too much, maybe, or because he’s suddenly terrified of feeling this way again. It’s like breathing life into scar tissue, speaking a dead language. Losing him the first time had nearly killed him. Shutting down that part of himself since has kept him safe. Seeing him panic seems to have the same effect on Jesse, who moves to close the gap between them but stops short, losing his courage. 

“I just-” he begins. “I hope it’s not too late, or that something’s changed-”

Rob freezes. He realizes, all at once, what Jesse was so afraid of in coming here: rejection. Somehow he’d imagined he would turn him down or tell him he’d found someone else, and he could almost laugh at the thought.

“No,” Rob breathes as he turns. He looks at him like he’s gone insane. “God, no, how could you-” He shakes his head, moving in closer and softening his tone. “Of course it’s not too late. I would’ve waited another ten years. Twenty. Whatever it took.”

There is something small in Jesse’s eyes, then. It starts as a seed and bursts into full bloom, and he feels all the tension drain out of him like a plug has been pulled. He didn’t think he’d wait, and it’s a fair assumption. He was probably a fool to do it for so long.

But he never felt like he had a choice. He never wanted another option. He only ever wanted him.

“You waited,” he echos, stunned. “For me?”

All Rob can do is nod. 

“You said one day.”

Jesse kisses just like he remembers, but surprisingly more hesitant and tentative. He starts slowly at first, barely anything more than a soft brush of their lips together, before Rob loses his patience with that and deepens the kiss, knotting a hand in his curls and cherishing the familiar feeling of them beneath his fingertips. He thinks for a moment that someone might see, then realizes it doesn’t matter anymore. 

Let them. Nothing in the fucking world could make him stop. 

He kisses him as hard as he can to make up for wasted time, surging forward and holding nothing back. Jesse opens to him with no resistance. They leave all that resistance and restraint behind with their polite smiles and furtive glances, all those weapons in their arsenal to conceal the truth of what they were to each other. They don’t need them anymore, and they never will again.

When they finally pull apart, Jesse rests his head on his shoulder in a way he’s never done before, almost collapsing against him. He feels so heavy in his arms. He’s exhausted, and Rob knows how he feels as he winds his arms around him, whispering soothing words into his hair, sweet nothings that mean everything. He remembers how tired he was when he left the Kamer.

Now, he can help shoulder that burden for him.

“How long are you in town for?” Jesse asks once they’ve pulled apart.

He huffs a laugh. “After that? Maybe forever.”

“Good,” he says, chuckling too. “Forever is… forever is good. Come on. I have a flat a few blocks away.”

It feels so familiar to take up this ritual again, and Rob does it like hardly any time has passed, like they were never apart at all. Like he’s seen him every day for the last ten years. They aren’t who they were back then, and they never will be again, but this is better, he thinks. This was worth waiting for.

It won’t be perfect, either, he is sure of that, because it never was the first time around. Then again, it doesn’t have to be. What they have - this small, secret thing they’ve never really had a name for - is enough. They spent so many days only living for stolen moments, so many nights parting after only a few hours. Now, they have tonight and the next, as well as the one after that. World enough and time, and each other.

Jesse puts an arm around his shoulders, and they set off down the street until the Binnenhof has faded into the background behind them. They leave it there without a second glance.

FIN