The Open Secret

1

Note: Hello there. Welcome to my fic. For legal reasons, this is a joke, and nothing here is to be taken seriously or as an accurate portrayal of the real-life individuals involved. I was just personally victimized by Dutch politician Tiktok.

Now... onward and upward (or downward in this case).

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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.