The Open Secret

11

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.