Work Text:
Dinsdag, April 27, 2021
00:00
“Fuck, Sander, come on out!”
“What?”
Sander knows exactly what. Robbe would frown if he wasn’t already beaming, if he wasn’t too busy with one hand on the bathroom doorknob and another holding his phone with an instrumental version of the “happy birthday” song already queued up, his finger ready to tap, hit play, and bare it all with his horrific yet shameless singing voice. The things he does for love— and if you’d told Robbe a year ago that he’d do this, put this much effort into Sander’s birthday, he’d maybe believe you. The pandemic sort of put a damper on making any efforts for...well, anything. It left him restless, yearning for grandiosity.
But Robbe from two years ago? He’d never imagine that he would be here, standing in nothing but his underwear and his boyfriend’s oversized Bowie shirt, holding two ridiculously frilly, multicolored party hats with presents that he spent two hundred Euros on tucked away in his overnight bag. Not that the money matters, not in the slightest, but still.
“Sander,” Robbe whines. Another tap on the door.
“Hmmph?” The hinge opens slowly. Sander’s toothbrush hangs from his mouth, his movements unhurried. Foam dribbles down his chin and Robbe is absolutely, embarrassingly, nightmarishly gone for this boy, because something about it is downright dreamlike, makes him want to lurch into Sander’s space and kiss it off him.
He shakes off the thought. That’s for later.
“Come on, it’s midnight!”
“Alright, alright.” Sander spits, rinses, and towels off his mouth. “You’re acting like it’s Christmas.”
“I didn't always like Christmas,” Robbe reminds him, though not quite sure why. Sander knows by now how much he’s made Robbe into a sap, into an optimist, a person who— dare he say it— actually sort of sometimes likes things. He doesn’t need to keep bringing it up.
So instead, he proves it. He sings, he dances, he whips out tubes of bright, bursting confetti; he kisses Sander so hard his back hits the shower curtain and they almost fall into the bathtub.
07:12
Robbe’s never celebrated a significant other’s birthday before. He’s pretty sure he’s making a bigger deal out of it than he needs to— he knows he is, actually, because Sander’s told him so— but whatever. He doesn’t know the etiquette so he’s going all out, sue him.
He knows a thing or two about blowjobs, though.
“My mom is making breakfast.” Sander’s hands fist in Robbe’s hair. “Pancakes, she always does. On my birth- fuck, Robbe.”
Robbe’s hum when he pulls off is intentional. “What?” he asks, and the word comes out throaty and hoarse. He feels Sander’s thighs quiver underneath his palms.
“She’s going to come upstairs.” Sander’s own hand stays atop Robbe’s head. His fingertips trace his temple, his eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, the single silver earring dangling from his left lobe. When Robbe lowers his mouth again, sedulous and saccharine, Sander’s thumb feels the press of himself against Robbe’s cheek. He groans loud at it, throws a hasty arm over his head, and mutters another “fuck.” Downstairs, he hears the clatter of dishes.
“I’ll be quick, then.”
Robbe waits anyway. Expectant, doe-eyed and wet-lipped, he offers Sander an out, lets him make the choice.
The affection rushes straight to Sander’s gut. He guides Robbe back down.
08:15
“Best birthday ever,” Sander tells Robbe. “Already.”
His words come out blended, mushed together in a sigh that fans across Robbe’s cheek. He’s sleepy, leaning against Robbe’s side at the bus stop outside Koninklijk. Blessed with a lucky late start— an hour and twenty minutes until his first class starts across the city at the Academy— he checks the transit app for the second time that morning, doesn’t care too much when his ride shows up in yellow lettering as being delayed by a few minutes.
“Your birthday,” Robbe scoffs, “has barely begun. That can’t be true.”
Their intertwined hands slip out of Robbe’s coat pocket and swing between them. “I think it will be.”
Sander isn’t sure why Robbe pouts at this.
“What time were you born?” he asks. Sander answers immediately, just like Robbe expects him to. Of course he knows this off the top of his head, what a typical Taurus, and oh my god, Robbe thinks, what has this boy turned him into? He’s someone who knows astrology now.
“Noon. 12:17, I think.”
“So technically, you’re still nineteen. It won’t really be your day, your moment, until then.”
“Still know it’s my best birthday ever.”
Robbe shrugs, gives Sander a hopeful half-smile. Planning, promising.
Across the courtyard of Koninklijk, Aaron and Moyo are a blur of motion coming full speed their way. Sander squeezes Robbe’s hand, his thumb tracing shapes on the back of his palm, and only lets go to accept the hugs and handshakes coming his way— and a bright blue balloon that Luca, appearing out of nowhere from behind the shelter of the bus stop, urges into his grip with a raucous cheer that wakes him up all over again.
10:29
Signing up for a study group for calculus was one of Robbe’s smartest choices as of late. It would be a lot smarter if he actually went to some of the sessions.
“I wish,” Robbe says when a girl, blonde and auburn-haired and vaguely familiar-looking asks if he can make tonight’s meeting at Bibliotheek Permeke. He absolutely does not wish.
“It’s my boyfriend’s birthday.”
He grins, lopsided and giddy when he walks away. He’s still not quite used to the way that it feels to say that: mijn vriendje. Still not quite used to the way that it feels to feel good.
12:17
Gelukkige verjaardag, baby, Robbe texts him the second the minute hand flicks over from sixteen to seventeen. He’s been watching the time all class, even meticulously planned the best way, the best angle away to hide his phone in the crevice of his English textbook. His water bottle, covered in stickers Sander has printed of his own artwork (he’s started selling it both in person and online, due to Robbe’s insistence that he give it a shot), serves as a divider, another distraction to keep the generally clueless teacher from catching onto the way he’s staring rather suspiciously into his lap.
Ik hou van jou, Sander responds immediately. Now pay attention.
When Robbe will unlock his phone later, in the clamber of lunch period, he’ll have three unread messages from Sander. All emojis, smiles and hearts and confetti, and a rogue eggplant that Robbe will ignore, at least for now.
15:32
“You taste good,” Robbe murmurs when he finds Sander in the halls of the Academy, presses him up against the ivory lockers. His fingers lace in Sander’s belt loops, his mouth ghosting against his cheek. Some of Sander’s paintbrushes fall to the floor and Sander laughs, the sounds tinkling together.
“If this is how you’re going to behave, I should have my birthday more often.”
Someone down the hallway says something, their voice echoing. Robbe doesn’t turn, doesn’t care. He peppers a scattering of kisses around Sander’s face— on his forehead, his nose, his lips once more— and then lifts his hands until they settle on Sander’s shoulders. He licks his lips and thinks, then gives him a pointed look. “Did someone get you cake before I did?”
Sander’s eyebrows lift dangerously. Robbe watches the dimples on his cheeks resurface. “Never, Robin. You should know I don’t want anyone’s cake but yours.”
Robbe’s eyes flash, a chuckle wheezing out of his mouth as he rolls his eyes, tries to nudge Sander away— but Sander is quicker in the way he twists them around, pins Robbe against the opposite wall.
“Hey,” Robbe warns. There’s a protest on the tip of tongue, something about teachers and detention and the weak social distancing guidelines that they’re supposed to be following when on school grounds, but when Sander slides a knee between Robbe’s legs and leans in to nuzzle his throat, Robbe’s brain short circuits. So he lets him keep at it, if just for a moment. It is his birthday, after all.
It’s not at all like he’s desperate himself, like he’s been dreaming of Sander’s touch since they parted ways for classes earlier. Like he doesn’t still maybe want to go down on Sander again, maybe right here in the nearest bathroom, just because he can, just because he should, just because today feels like International Sander Day and he wants to give this boy everything he possibly can, over and over again until he’s spent.
He ducks away when he feels Sander’s teeth graze against his neck. “Hey,” he says again, trying his hardest to calm the slow creep of blush on his cheeks. He kisses Sander once more, if only for investigative purposes. He tastes like buttercream and sugar.
“Seriously, did you already have dessert?”
There’s another joke on the tip of Sander’s tongue and Robbe watches him stifle it, smirk around the shell of it. He pulls away, grabs onto Robbe’s hand, and kisses the lines of his knuckles.
“Amber,” he says. Of course, Robbe thinks. “Cupcakes. They were really good, too. I saved one for you.”
“Just one?”
Sander unzips his backpack, hands over a ball of tin foil. Robbe opens it upside down, traces a fingertip through the heavy vanilla frosting piled atop the white cake, and sucks on it. He hears Sander inhale.
“Aaron apparently ate a half dozen last night, fresh out of the oven.”
“Typical,” Robbe replies, grinning. Sander’s words come out fast, rushed, and Robbe’s finger stays in his mouth because of it. His tongue darts around the pad, around a stray path of sprinkles coating his thumb.
“Robbe,” Sander starts, low, and Robbe quits as easily as he’d begun. He takes a big bite of the cupcake, as unsexy as he can possibly manage, and grins up at Sander through it.
“Fucking impossible,” Sander mutters but he’s smiling, too.
Robbe lifts on his toes, ruffles Sander’s hair, the color of fall and chocolate and happiness. Robbe used to think, in a fleeting period of shallowness, that he’d always prefer Sander’s bleach-blonde hair, the softness of the silver and the way it made him look under the moonlight. The way it would remind him of their beginning, of how it felt under his hands the first time he touched it, wet and glistening in a swimming pool that he’d never known existed, in a side of the city he never wandered, feeling something he’d never known he could feel. Or the way he’d held it later when it was Sander’s turn to be heart-wrenchingly vulnerable, to drop to his knees and wipe charcoal and watercolor and tears onto Robbe’s shirtsleeves, to start again, and again and again and again with him. The way it became all that he knew, all that he was familiar with, when the world shut down and the vibrancy of Sander’s face could only come as physically close to him as the brightness of his laptop screen.
“When did Amber get these to you?” Robbe asks. “How’d I miss that?”
“Right before the bus came. When you were talking to Jens.”
Sander opens his locker, reveals Luca’s balloon floating inside.
Around a mouthful, Robbe says, “I should thank Amber.”
Sander’s head is deep inside the depths of the bin, digging around for a specific textbook. “Hmm?”
“For a good cupcake, but not as good as the cake I have for you later.”
Robbe’s mouth comes to the shell of Sander’s ear, his arm looping around his shoulders when he whispers, “that both is, and isn’t, innuendo.”
Sander spins, snatches the almost empty cupcake wrapper back, and pretends to tuck it away into the pocket of his jacket.
“I told you, fucking impossible,” he repeats, but hands it back anyway when Robbe extends a hand and a halfway-innocent curl of his lips.
“Angel,” Sander eulogizes through a mutter. At the door, Robbe stands and waits, and Sander catches up with a long, low whistle and an insistent drag of his feet.
17:21
Their long strides match in opposite colored shoes atop the pavement. Black Docs, white sneakers, yin and yang, and in the fluorescent buzz of Stadsfeestzal, Robbe notices dirt on the curved toe of Sander’s boot. There’s grass on the side of his own sole, mirrored imprints on each foot, so he ducks into Kruidvat for some baking soda and white vinegar to clean them, leaving Sander in the lobby with a free sample of hot chocolate and a kiss on his cheek.
In the checkout line, his phone dings: an Instagram notification from Sander, a post to his story, a black and white— as always— photo of a David Bowie themed jigsaw puzzle.
He turns away from the register as soon as it’s his turn, muttering a sorry to the disgruntled looking woman operating the counter, but he can’t care too much. He finds Sander at the front of the shop, phone in one hand and puzzle box in the other. “David Bowie in Outer Space!” it reads.
“You don’t have to,” Sander starts, almost sheepish when Robbe reaches out and grabs it. He just shakes his head, kisses a droplet of cocoa off the corner of his lips.
“You want it, you got it,” Robbe tells him, and means it.
20:34
“How’d you know red velvet was my favorite?”
Robbe glances over at Sander. Just a fleeting second, a brief attempt at a wink, and then his eyes are back on the cake laid out before him. It’s bright red against the white of the countertops, against the plate beneath it that his grandma gave him a few years back as a part of a collection, one of many housewarming gifts. His arm is getting sore from the angle it’s at, wielding a spatula and smoothing chocolate frosting atop the third layer of dessert. He’s working to the best of his capabilities, which are admittedly not great, and he wishes briefly, especially when Sander pulls out his phone to record him, that he hadn’t kicked Zoë out of the apartment for the evening. She’s always been a damn good baker.
But Sander is a damn good kisser, especially when he lifts Robbe up off his feet and holds onto him so tight that Robbe almost says fock it and lets the utensil clatter to the floor. Almost. He’s only got one, and he’s not about to busy himself with cleaning it when he could be doing other things.
“You’re so cute,” Sander tells him, each word punctuated with a sway of their bodies. Robbe’s toes barely touch the floor. “So. Cute.”
When Sander gives the frosting a try, he spins it like he’s a chef on Heel Holland Bakt. This time, Robbe is the one to film him.
“Of course you’re good at this,” he sighs, but he’s glad for the break. He declares himself a quitter of cake frosting and perches himself atop the counter, busying himself with plucking chocolate chips out of a bag. Half of them make it onto the parts of the cake that are already frosted; the others end up in Sander’s mouth.
“Don’t eat them all before we even get to try the actual dessert we’ve labored over,” he tells Sander, but doesn’t stop him when he reaches for another handful while the cake chills in the freezer.
21:41
Robbe expects the confusion on Sander’s face when he opens the final box.
The other presents had been simple, easy, even a little cheesy. A matching necklace to Robbe’s own, made by the same jeweler but with a slightly different size, different colored metal alloy, and the same angel engraved to watch over him. A handwritten note from Robbe, something short but sappy that makes Sander laugh and tear up a little bit and then get distracted by kissing him too much. A box of cookies, store-bought but Sander’s favorite, from Robbe’s mom, along with a card covered with cartoon, smiley-faced tulips. A couple of joints Jens had scored from his dealer, along with a bottle of wine that Robbe bought months ago at the corner store, knowing it was usually sold out, overpriced and imported from California— not to mention all over every girl’s Instagram story. In all honesty, it hadn’t even necessarily been a gift; Robbe had meant for them to drink it together the day that he got it, to do a tasting of sorts along with a charcuterie board to act fancy and see if it deserved all the praise it had gotten. That idea had been long forgotten when Sander brought over cheaper beers and suggested a Tarantino movie instead, and Robbe couldn’t be mad about that if he tried.
Sander has his Duvel pushed to the side now. It topples precariously between his leg and a couch cushion that’s a few small movements away from falling to the ground, and in fear of the drink being next, Robbe reaches for it and takes a sip. His own beer sits just on the floor, next to his gray-socked feet, but this is easier. Doesn’t require bending down. It’s also an avoidance tactic.
“Robbe, what is this?”
Sander’s voice is low, like he knows it means something. It being this moment, it being the present, it being the value in the tiny, essentially valueless piece of paper in the essentially valueless box. It is a paper airplane made out of origami paper, folded by the woman in Grote Markt who stands there every day, rain or shine, and moves her hands as quick as lightning just to give her work away for free. Anyone who stands and watches and gives her the time of day becomes a recipient, and Sander marvels at her craft every chance he gets. This isn’t his first piece from her, not even close, and Robbe knows it won’t be his last.
“It’s a promise,” Robbe finally says. He swallows hard, suddenly nervous, and with his heart in his throat like Sander is going to reject him, he explains: that once the semester ends, or in the fall, or maybe next year, or whenever Sander prefers, they can go on a trip. Also to wherever Sander prefers. Robbe wants to splurge, to save up and figure out the best spots to go and the worst tourist traps to avoid but also the fun ones to get roped into anyway. He wants to give Sander whatever he wants, treat him like the king he is; he throws in a Bowie reference for good measure, to butter him up or maybe to lighten the mood because it’s heavy, suddenly, though not in a bad way, but heavy all the same— and before Robbe can process why, Sander has him buried in his arms, hugging him so tight it almost knocks the wind out of him.
“You want to go on vacation with me?” he asks. It comes out a little watery.
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Where?”
Robbe leans to the side, tips them both over a little bit. It’s his attempt at a nudge, at grounding them both. “I just told you, wherever you want. It’s your pick, all for you.”
Sander pulls away. His hands stay on Robbe’s shoulders, equidistant from the collar of his shirt. “You can’t afford it all on your own.”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, Robin, you can’t.”
“Okay, fine, not entirely. But most of it. And Sander, allee.” He smooths his own hands down Sander’s arms. “It’s for you.”
There’s more that Robbe doesn’t say, things he doesn’t have to. Things like it’s all for you, you’re the one, there is no one else for me but you and I know that with an intensity that scares the living shit out of me sometimes, I want to give you the world but for now I’ll have to start with this, I love you so much it hurts sometimes.
Instead of all that, he just takes the airplane back out of the box and flies it straight into Sander’s open palm without ever letting his own fingers drop it.
22:30
Sander is sexy when he’s emotional. It’s a strange thing that Robbe’s learned.
Sexual, sensual, physical, all of the synonyms, that’s what Sander is when he gets like this: when he’s happy, when he’s sad, when he’s feeling everything, even sometimes when he’s not feeling enough and he wants to change that. When he needs to come back to Earth just to be flung into orbit once more by the only person who knows quite how to get him there.
Sander’s kisses are quick jabs atop Robbe’s throat, collarbone, his chest. He lifts his hips up into the grind that follows, always follows, when Sander lowers himself enough to make that contact— and Robbe forgets sometimes how good it is to just rut into each other because he gets distracted by all the better things further along the chase.
Robbe reads Sander like a book. Knows that it’s a sign of gratitude when Sander pants into his open mouth, affection when he tips his head to nip at his jaw. Acknowledgement when he slows down the roll of his body, just to drag it out, and Robbe swears Sander’s reading his mind, or maybe he’s been reading his this whole time.
In the beginning, Robbe had worried about the intensity, about the hidden meanings he wasn’t skilled enough— and maybe never would be— to read. He’d analyzed Sander’s actions to the point of losing focus, then worried about every new thing being a sign of an old thing: hyperactivity or misery or mania or something Robbe had missed along the lines of his love that had been so thoroughly mixed with both care mixed with caution. It had taken time to see that behind closed doors, Sander was showcasing something else entirely, and Robbe was seeing him, layer by layer, laid as bare emotionally as he could be physically.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sander gasps and Robbe pulls away from the crook of his neck. He looks up at Sander to find him equally as breathless, his hair sticking up every which way. His hand betrays his own words, doesn’t stop palming against Robbe’s crotch. “I feel like we should be playing that birthday sex song. By Jeremih, right?”
Robbe flops back onto the pillows, drops a haphazard arm over his eyes. “You’re so...oh my god. Oh my god.”
“What?”
Robbe just keeps on spluttering.
Woensdag, April 28, 2021
00:09
“Happy birthday.” Robbe says it into the darkness of his bedroom. It looks no different with his eyes open or closed, but he swears he can see Sander’s expression anyway. He knows what it would be, what it is without even turning the light on. Upturned lips, quirked eyebrows, an expectant, intrigued look on that face, that face.
“It’s not my birthday anymore.”
Robbe shifts in closer, swings a leg around his hips so he’s half-straddling him. “Happy birthday anyway.”
“You’ve said it to me probably a thousand times today.”
So Robbe says it again, makes it a thousand and one, and then adds, “ik hou van jou.” He leans forward to kiss Sander once, blindly on the corner of his mouth, and drops his head onto Sander’s chest.
They do this a lot: just laying together, holding each other. Sometimes they sleep, sometimes they don’t; sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t. The circumstances can change— in the nighttime, they’re often shrouded in the soft filter of the streetlights, usually the moon too. In the morning, the birds and passing cars wake them up, or sometimes the music coming from Sander’s laptop does it first. When that happens, it’s usually muffled from under the sheets, but the volume gets turned up high once Robbe flails around in his sleep and tends to forget they fell asleep while watching a movie in bed. Sometimes there’s the sound of Milan and Zoë next door, though the latter is usually at Senne’s place these days, but no matter what, there’s always, always the sound, the feeling of Sander’s heartbeat beneath Robbe’s cheek, his ear, around his whole being.
That feeling, that fondness, holds true now. It’s what wills Robbe to speak again.
“I wanted you to have a good day. The best day, actually.”
Robbe can hear Sander’s smile. “I did. I always do with you.”
“I know, I know, but I wanted it to be special, you know? I wanted-”
“I mean it, Robbe.” He’s pulled closer, tugged on top of Sander before he can even register which body the movement has spurred from. He and Sander are so intertwined in moments like these that he sometimes forgets whose hands are who, much less which shirt belongs to him when the sun rises.
“Do you know?” Sander asks. “Because it’s true.”
Robbe’s eyes have since adjusted to the darkness, and now he sees a stark seriousness in Sander’s eyes, a kind that’s almost rare. He stares at Robbe; Robbe stares back, and there’s something unspoken, something Sander doesn’t have to explain and Robbe doesn’t have to rationalize that passes between them.
“I know,” Robbe finally says. And he does. “But we didn’t get to celebrate last year, not really, and I wanted to make up for it. Besides…” he trails off, unsure of why. “You’re...you deserve it. Everything you want, really. I want you to have that. And I want to be the one to give it to you.”
The cotton of Sander’s shirt is warm against Robbe’s bare chest. The fleece of his pajama pants surely the same for Sander’s naked calves.
“You do, Robbe. Every day of the year. Without even trying, just by being you.”
Robbe exhales, long and deep. “Sap,” he finally says, but he can’t help the giddy lift in his chest, the realization that now it feels like his birthday.
As if on cue, Sander murmurs, “now just wait and see what I have planned for November.”
When Sander grins, wide and knowing and almost comical, there’s no amount of darkness that could make Robbe miss it.