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When he arrives, most of the other attendees are already there, nursing various types of alcoholic beverages while occupying both the bar and the surrounding standing tables in handfuls of groups. It takes him a moment of wandering further inwards and slipping through a tight squeeze of bodies or two to finally spot a familiar head of curly hair, which he makes for immediately, the quickly dwindling cold glare from outside replacing itself with the warmth of the pub’s dim lighting. The motion must draw Jesse’s eye, because he looks up before Rob has properly reached their table, greeting him with the same bright smile and twinkle in his eyes that hasn’t seemed to dull over the years. For all the stress that’s been eating away at him, that will continue to eat away at him for God knows how long, Rob still manages to return that smile, not as lustrous but at least just as fond.
“Good to see you,” Jesse starts, and Rob gives a quick glance around the table before responding. He recognizes most faces: to his immediate left is Esmah, a newly inaugurated MP for GreenLeft, to her left are Julian, Habtamu and then Jesse. He recognizes the guy to the right of him only by face, though he can’t place him yet. A new associate of Jesse’s, must be. “Sigrid kept you long, I suppose?”
There’s an obvious wink in that. It’s been a while since Sigrid was Rob’s superior, but this was their in-joke for years before then. Jesse knows as well as Rob does that pretty much any overtime he does is his own doing– sometimes, he feels like this is Jesse’s way of taking just a drop of the weight off his shoulders, and he’s grateful for it.
“Yeah,” he responds, his smile going lopsided before mellowing down a bit. “I’m surprised you’re not in the same boat. Confident enough with your 25 seats?”
“Aware of how much work still rests us,” is Jesse’s ever so measured response, still smiling over his glass of red wine. “But capable of taking a break nonetheless.”
Rob knows he’s got him, and he concedes with an amused shake of his head, looking over his shoulder to locate a server. Jesse is faster, though, and has raised his hand to flag one over before Rob finds the opportunity. When Rob glances back at him, Jesse gives him a nod, a hand gesture conveying go ahead.
Like I can’t do it myself, Rob thinks, as per the playful roll of his eyes. “A white wine, please,” he requests of the server, who nods dutifully.
“Oh, and can we get a plate of fried snacks for the table?” The follow-up request sounds from his right hand side, and he looks around at the neophyte, who shrugs. “A bite to eat for the borrel.”
To his side, Jesse nods approvingly. “Naturally,” Rob concedes with his best I’m-game smile. The topic of food reminds him of the fact he’s hardly eaten anything today, and he’s just ordered a glass of wine– could be problematic. It’s been a while since he’s eaten anything fried, truth be told, but he thinks he might have to, just to prevent his bloodstream from spongeing up the first sip of alcohol he takes. And maybe you could live a little, he thinks to himself, briefly catching Jesse’s sparkling eyes again.
His wine arrives a few minutes later, closely followed by the food; they clink their glasses together over the plate, and then they’re off, plunging into discussion about the recent election results, the impending formation process, the consequences a far-right landslide victory like Wilders’ can and will have for the country. It’s never much that can be said in front of a microphone, and it’s still not everything now, not in the presence of a mixture of parties– but it’s still more, and though Rob doesn’t offer much more than his election program states, he appreciates the open conversation, the fire still present in Jesse’s every word. Always in opposition, he’s managed to stay true to himself, to the Jesse Rob knew all those years ago. He’s not entirely sure the same can be said of him. Sock puppet of the coalition. Kaag’s loyal hound. Robot Jetten. Public opinion is confident in its case, at least.
Jesse’s gaze lands on him often, and for some reason that creates an urgency to eat in his mind. A staunch vegetarian, he opts for one of the meat-free snacks, dipping it carefully before biting off half. It’s good, he thinks, one of those flavors that don’t become unfamiliar no matter how little you taste them. With the long-awaited stimulation of his tastebuds, his hunger comes surging back to him, the hollowness of his stomach instantly at the forefront of his mind. He can feel it in his muscles, now, as well as in his head; achy with exhaustion, crying out for more.
And you’re giving it this.
He doesn’t know why the thought surprises him. He knows he’s health-conscious, has been for a very long time, practicing about ten different sports and keeping careful track of his dietary needs. As a young, progressive party leader and Minister of Climate, it befits his image, is perhaps even necessary to maintain it. He minimizes his ecological footprint, exhibits the sort of healthy mind and body a voter can rely on, a face they can trust. That, and he has the chip in his heart to consider, a near constant in the back of his mind since it got implanted. Take care of your health, the doctor had sent him off with. Just like him, to have a fragile heart.
Because he’s already begun, he takes the other bite without showing a thing on his face, well-versed by now in the art of pretending. Jesse’s eyes move to him from across the circle again, and he thinks he can see a flicker of joy in them, like he’s happy to see him eating something.
Or maybe that’s just the wine seeping straight into his system without a barrier. With his pinky, Jesse gestures towards the same snack Rob had picked off the plate. “Any good?”
“Yeah,” Rob responds, and he thinks he nods encouragingly enough. It prompts Jesse to follow suit; with his mouth still full, he nods in agreement. Good.
I’m glad you don’t have your heart to worry about, Rob thinks as he smiles back, and he means it in earnest.
From there on out, Rob tries his best to focus on the conversation, but at least half of his mind is occupied with the balancing act: alcohol on an empty stomach is bad, but so is grease, and he can’t figure out the lesser of two evils. Whenever he gets himself as far as to have another snack, he regrets it almost immediately. Whenever he takes a sip of wine, he thinks he can feel it seeping into his bloodstream straight off his tongue, skipping his stomach altogether. Multiple times, he considers just going home, but the thought feels ridiculous– escaping an important social situation because he can’t eat like every other normal adult around him.
That, and he doesn’t get to spend time with Jesse that often. For all Rob’s malfunctions tonight, Jesse somehow still manages to make him feel like the most valued person in the room, keeping him engaged in the conversation and communicating his every quiet response with his eyes. They’re having fun– or at least, they should be, but all Rob ever seems capable of is getting stuck in his own head.
Making another attempt to push it down, he reaches for a snack, and he’s just raised it to his mouth when Julian makes a segue into the very topic he’s trying to avoid. “… And like, I understand that the pressure on the health care system is immense, but what we eat is such a huge part of that. If you ask any of the people who drone on about it how much meat they eat, how often they go get french fries and bitterballen, the answer will tell you enough.”
Jesse chips in, then, saying something about how unhealthy meal options are so much easier to come by, how capitalism slots into that and how people like Wilders just can’t seem to find the root of the issue, but Rob has lost his focus already, feeling the chunk of carbs and cheese and grease in his mouth as though it’s funneling all its bad straight into his muscles, his brain, his heart. The need to perform control and normalcy pipes up as strong as ever, keeping his face set, one eyebrow arched as though he were listening intently. His mind, though, is already made up. Like punishment, he chews up the rest of the thing, which seems to take upwards of an hour to do, and then, at last, he excuses himself to the bathroom, winds his way past the final few tables as best he can and collapses to his knees in the first stall he can reach.
It must be the wine, in part, the wave of nausea in response to sudden movement, your own drunkenness catching up to you once you get up from your spot, that makes it so easy for him to throw up. He doesn’t have to do anything–a small solace in getting to pretend he didn’t induce vomiting, that there’s not really that much wrong with him–for the past hour’s refreshments to come barrelling back up his esophagus and into the toilet bowl below, stinging his throat and the back of his nasal cavity. It takes a moment to realize that the groan of despair he hears is coming from his own throat, that the lurching of his stomach makes him so sick it sends more back up. Outside of himself, almost, a passive onlooker of his own disarray. The second load sends a spatter onto his glasses when it joins the first; on autopilot, he wipes it off with the back of his hand, only succeeding in creating a smear.
Over the stench of toilet and his own sick, he sniffles involuntarily, then bursts into a single tearless sob. It’s a spasm more than an expression of sorrow, his body responding outside of his jurisdiction, in conflict with his mind. He doesn’t feel sad. He feels the burning in his throat, feels the thrumming of his pulse, but the only emotion he can make out is relief. The poison is out. Tomorrow morning, when he’s back to his senses, the memory of that thought might shock him, the idea that a perfectly normal kind of food is so easily reduced to poison in his mind. In his current state, it’s the plainest truth.
Still, he spits out the stubborn string of bile dangling from his tongue and sobs again, closing his eyes and hunching forward with the force of it. Maybe it’s just the surprise, the suddenness with which it all came rushing to the surface. Maybe it’s the stress and strain on him, all-consuming, no end in sight. Maybe it’s the ocean of negativity, piled upon him through years upon years, somehow seeming to grow worse rather than better as time goes on and drowning out the positive all too easily the moment he lets it. He loves this job, but perhaps it doesn’t love him– and that thought does elicit real heartache. Far outside of the bounds of reason is a dangerous place for a representative of the people to be, but he doesn’t see how it can be avoided. Not under this scrutiny. This pressure. Even now, all alone in a bathroom stall, he can hear the audience in his head, the voice of the masses—reporters, tweets, messages, shouts across the street—telling him to man up, to stop acting like a bitch, a sissy, a fag, too young and too gay and throwing up his food like a girl on top of it all, as though he never wants to be taken seriously again. Do I get to be human like the rest of you, or do I have to beg you for it?
When he hears the door creak behind him he scrambles to get to his feet, because God knows what two shoes poking out from under the stall looks like, and he’s already halfway up when the footsteps falter and a voice sounds, quiet and familiar, over the rushing of his pulse in his ears.
“Rob?”
Jesse, he thinks, and then no. If there’s anyone in the world he wants to see this less, it’s him.
He makes the mistake of pausing, though, giving himself away despite the fact he doesn’t respond to his name being called.
“There’s no one else here. I know it’s you,” Jesse says, as succinct and to the point in private as he is behind the stand. “Are you okay?”
Still half leaning on the toilet seat, that question robs him of his strength; he slumps down again, the tips of his fine leather footwear re-emerging from under the door. “I’m okay. Go away.” Right, that’s smart. That totally won’t make a man like Jesse bite down harder. “Really,” he adds, utterly in vain no matter how convincing he makes it sound.
“I hope you don’t expect me to believe that.” How does he manage to sound so stern? His footsteps draw closer, and as they stop, there’s the quiet tap of fingers against the handle. Not pushing, just asking. “C’mon. Open up.”
There’s no response from Rob as he briefly deliberates whether or not to just plainly ignore him. Leave. This isn’t your business. You’re making us look very suspicious by being here with me. He’s known Jesse longer than today, though, and there’s no scenario in which he sees him just walking back out.
Half defiant and half embarrassed, he flushes the toilet first, waits until the proof of his indisposition is full and well gone, then reaches back to undo the lock, his gaze unmoving. Go and get your look in, then. Maybe you can tell the press while you’re at it.
What he doesn’t expect is for a knee to nudge against his side, the other appearing right beside him, expertly hovering just above the floor. What he doesn’t expect are a pair of hands to catch him, one around his head and the other on his shoulder, as gentle as though his skin were paper. He frowns– doesn’t need this level of closeness, not right now, feeling as debased and disgusting as he does. Maybe not ever. He can almost feel Jesse’s wedding ring through the layers of his suit.
“No, come on,” he mutters, turning his head away from Jesse in weak protest. “I’m verdomme not—” Twenty-three, he wants to say, but he knows that sounds stupid before the words have even left his mouth. With the state he’s in, he might as well be. They might as well be.
“You don’t have a fever,” Jesse says, his fingers gently taking in the temperature of Rob’s forehead. It’s not the first time he’s ever touched him, but it’s been a good while. It’s still as tender as he remembers it to be, and despite his unwillingness, he can feel the tension in his forehead changing as though on Jesse’s command, can feel the way his body wants to melt into the other. With a shiver, he fights it, stays right where he is. No, he doesn’t have a fever. Thankfully, Jesse is forgiving enough to say nothing else of it.
Jesse is silent for a bit as he—Rob thinks, because he isn’t looking—inspects him, his thumb finding the spot between Rob’s shoulder blades and pushing in, circling there. “Mm-m,” is all Rob can bring out in protest; it feels good almost immediately, and it’s just so Jesse to know exactly what he needs, even now, with all these years between them.
“You are too tense,” is Jesse’s next observation, to which the corners of Rob’s mouth lift by a fraction.
“And you aren’t? We should dig into your shoulders some.”
He can feel Jesse smiling behind him. “Go ahead and dig. I’m not the one sporting the salt and pepper hair.”
“Oh, low blow,” Rob murmurs in response, but he is amused— leave it up to Jesse to bring light to the darkest goddamn hour. “Maybe you’re not tense enough, with your straight C’s ideology.”
Any other time, Rob thinks, Jesse would have playfully argued him about that; now, he just chuckles, closer by his ear than he’d thought he was. Close enough to feel the air move. “I don’t think you have any reason to worry about me.” The other way around, on the other hand…
His eyes close again, shifting his perception to touch to feel Jesse’s with all the more clarity. Somewhere very deep down, he feels a pang that he can’t really place. This is nice, but it’s not a part of his life. It can’t be. He doesn’t want it to be. Jesse doesn’t seem to mind giving freely, but Rob knows well enough that he can’t just take and take, can’t abuse Jesse’s generosity. This–Jesse’s hands and Jesse’s touch and Jesse’s voice and Jesse’s knee an inch away from a public bathroom floor–feels like abusing it. I’m sorry, he has the urge to say. Instead, he says nothing.
For the briefest of moments, Jesse’s hold on him becomes a caress, the fingers on his forehead curling and lifting to stroke him from his brow to the frontmost locks of his hair. It’s quick enough for him to wonder whether he imagined it: a moment later, the warmth behind him disappears, and Jesse is up on his feet offering Rob a hand over his shoulder. “Think you can make it?”
Rob takes the hand and pushes himself to his feet with relative ease, barely making use of the extra leverage. Thank God for pilates. “Can I stand on my own two feet? Yeah, I think I’ll manage.” He’s still a little shaky, his mouth and throat feel downright nasty and he has low expectations of the state of his eyes, but he thinks he can bear to put on the face again with a gulp of water and a quick touch-up.
The face is something they both understand well enough; when Rob steps into the light, Jesse, with his hand lightly on his shoulder, guides him towards the row of mirrors, turns the tap on and holds that same hand out. “Glasses, please.”
“I’m perfectly capable of—”
Jesse’s eyes meet Rob’s in the mirror, tolerating no contradiction. “You wanna splash your face. Put them in my hand.”
There’s a brief moment in which the glasses go from Rob’s face to his breast pocket to Jesse’s hands as he plucks them out anyway, stubborn versus stubborn as they’ve always been, Rob pretending he didn’t notice as he leans over the sink to freshen up. Next to him, Jesse has pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket to clean the specs with, unflinching around the smear. Catching him from the corner of his eye, Rob almost feels another wave of nausea rise up within, along with a searing stab of guilt. Maybe he doesn’t know what it is. Maybe that’s even worse.
He hears the rattle of the paper towel dispenser, and when he turns off the tap, Jesse hands him a few sheets and slips his glasses back into his breast pocket. With his face pressed into the towels, Rob lets out a deep sigh, exasperation and relief all in one. “You didn’t have to. All of this, I mean.” Re-emerging to look at Jesse, then, he adds; “Did you even think about how suspicious this looks?”
At that, Jesse laughs. “You overestimate people’s curiosity. If anyone asks, we went for a smoke.”
“I don’t smoke. You don’t smoke.”
Jesse holds his gaze, eyes sparkling. “They won’t ask.”
Maybe it’s just how sure Jesse is of himself, but he turns out to be right: nobody asks, and they manage to get through the relatively short rest of their evening with only Jesse seeming to monitor Rob a little more carefully. It’s harder to meet his eyes after what they’ve seen, and Rob feels as though he looks down or away a little too often– but then, only Jesse would notice, and he thinks he can deal with that.
About half an hour later, Jesse calls it quits in the name of a halfway decent bedtime, and a wink in Rob’s direction tells him it’s his ticket out. “I think I’ll follow your example,” he says, giving a nod and reaching to throw his coat over his shoulders. “Given that it’s a rare good one.”
“I’m packed with good examples,” Jesse easily retorts. “Read our party program. Maybe you’ll change your tune a bit.”
“I have. Not bad, if you wanna be the youth’s Karl Marx.”
“Already there. Don’t you know how they love me?” And there’s no getting in between them once they slip into this; they barely take note of the amused looks their colleagues are giving them over their shoulders as they pass them by, blurring, just for that moment, the lines between GreenLeft and D66, between DWARS and Young Democrats. The flurry of coat and scarf in which they leave the establishment is not at all unlike the one they moved in back then. A little slower, maybe, just a hint less carefree— but it’s them, alright. Twenty-three. It wasn’t all bad, was it?
It’s for that brief moment until they walk out of the door together that Rob forgets the evening’s misadventures. They catch up to him when he meets Jesse’s eyes again, having stepped into the sobering night air, and he casts his gaze down at the street before them as they set off. It’s a little quieter outside now than when he arrived, most of those out for drinks now huddled up together inside the Plein’s many pubs and restaurants. It’s fully dark, and as it is, people don’t think anything of two politicians walking the streets of The Hague anyways. For all his hardships, Rob still enjoys a relative amount of freedom– he ponders his colleagues on the right sometimes, unable to so much as take a walk without needing to be swarmed with security, and he doesn’t envy them.
Then again, looking over at Jesse, he wonders whether those colleagues would have a heart for this, whether they’d find the value in someone like Jesse at their side, an equal over a subordinate, a friend. They seem occupied with other matters than the way the yellow streetlights of the old city center make a halo of said friend’s curly hair at the right angle or the way it gets caught as a glimmer in his eyes, the way it beams their warmth right off his irises in gold. In reverse, he doesn’t think they would occupy themselves with kneeling beside a friend on a dirty restroom floor, taking note of all their broken pieces and expertly putting them together again, not a word spent on making them feel lesser. He can’t see them helping someone up off said floor, cleaning their glasses and covering for them without needing to be asked. He can’t see them caring like Jesse does. And that’s the thing about Jesse, isn’t it, the thing that’s made him feel like a warm constant throughout all Rob’s years in this vipers’ pit from the very moment they’d met– he cares. In a million little unspoken ways, he offers the touch of his benevolence to whoever might need it, never asking for anything in return, seemingly not even conceiving of the thought that he might deserve something in return.
Catching his eyes to the side of him, Rob offers him a small smile in thanks, rare in its vulnerability. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.” I’m not sure I wanted you to do that. But that, too, is typically Jesse, and punishing him for his kindness would be akin to plucking feathers from an angel’s wings. So he doesn’t.
Something softens in Jesse’s gaze, and Rob isn’t sure he’s ever seen him look at anyone like that. His kids get this look, no doubt. His wife. And now him. “I know. You can handle yourself. I just know you longer than yesterday– you handle yourself a little too much, sometimes.”
At that, Rob casts his eyes aside. “I’m alright,” he says, because it’s all he can say to that as a peculiar and bittersweet sensation washes over him that he can’t quite place, but that might have something to do with the realization, very far off in the back of his mind, that this is only a one-off thing, luck of the draw, that even though Jesse’s saying this right now, Rob will be handling himself again tomorrow, as he always has. Which should be fine, by all accounts. It shouldn’t ache the way it does, dull and empty in the pit of his stomach. As alright as I was before you, and will be after you.
Jesse’s train of thought seems to lead him into the same direction as Rob’s, because after a brief silence, he ties in, “Is there someone at home who can take care of you? Y’know, hangover emergency kit style?” And Rob knows he adds that last part to be nice, to brush it off as a stressed-lightweight issue, perhaps, instead of what it really is. Makes the question feel a little less weighted, too, than Rob thinks he intends, which means he can laugh it off with a chuckle. I doubt they’d ever do it as well as you did at twenty-three.
“If it gets really bad, I’ll call someone,” he promises, someone being distinctly not-Jesse. No, he has no one at home. His lack of a love life is no longer Jesse’s concern.
“Alright,” Jesse says, his tone still too fond, too warm for comfort. And then, as if he’s read Rob’s mind and disagrees; “You have my number.”
It feels like a natural ending of their evening, and as they exit Lange Poten onto Spui, neither of them has an excuse to stretch it any further. “I’ll think about it,” Rob says off-handedly, and he means yeah, right but it comes out feeling more like I’ll think about it. A lot. The nauseous sensation is steadily returning to his stomach in some idiotic lament of the fact that Jesse isn’t walking him home like he did at twenty-three, and he knows that he has to cut this short and leave before those dark amber eyes and mahogany curls can make him feel any more. “So, see you around, Mr. Klaver.”
“Take care, Mr. Jetten,” Jesse responds in kind.
Thank you, Rob’s mind urges him to say. Come on. Thank you. But thank you implies a debt, implies a need in Rob for Jesse’s care, and even though it’s the least Jesse deserves tonight, Rob can’t seem to push the words past his lips. With a nod and a definitive crack inside his chest, he turns away, hoping that Jesse knows him well enough to know.
Then again, he’s Jesse Klaver. There’s no way he doesn’t.