The Open Secret

16

Note: Well, my friends, the time has come for the last chapter of this fic. It's been a hell of a ride and so much fun to write. I'll be publishing a new fic for these two soon, so keep an eye out here and on Ao3. It will be like this fic's more fun, less emotional YA novel rom-com cousin (and significantly less smutty). I think everyone will really enjoy it.

Thank you all for reading, and thank you to everyone who has recommended this fic to others. Especially thank you to everyone who left amazing comments every week with incredibly kind words. You are all wonderful. This isn't goodbye - just see you soon.

One last time, here we go.

-

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.