Archive of Our Own ^beta

Robbe startles at the sound of knocking on his window. 

Immediately, his heart starts pounding in his chest, and he’s frozen in his place on the small cot. There’s no curtains on these windows, so whoever is out there can look directly in. 

If this were Antwerp, he wouldn’t be half as terrified. For one, if anyone were able to manage to get to the 3rd floor window of Sander’s apartment, Robbe would have to give them kudos for effort. For two, if he were at his house, he’d just assume it was Sander or a neighbor kid on a dare. 

But they’re not in Antwerp. Sander’s family has a house on the seaside and they invited Robbe and his mom to spend the weekend with them. The quiet, isolated stretch of beach had seemed nice when they first got there this morning, when they could play in the waves or hang out in the sand without crowds or noise. Now, though, he feels like the naïve family that comes to the creepy house and gets murdered—and he’s going to be first, because they always kill the gay one first. 

He’s half a second from waking up his mom, who is snoring in the bed next to him, when his phone buzzes. He grabs it quickly, the notification reminding him that he has a phone that he can use in the event of an emergency, and checks to see who it was. 

Unsurprisingly, it’s a text from Sander. 

Sander (1:25am): It’s me at your window, come outside!!

Sander (1:25am): Bring a blanket

Fuck. Robbe rests his phone on his chest and takes a couple deep breaths, trying to calm his heart down now that he knows it was just his boyfriend being ridiculous and not a psychotic serial killer or monster escaped from a nearby radioactive lab or something. 

He briefly considers not going just to spite Sander for freaking him out, but ultimately he knows himself better than that. He’s hopeless to do anything other than what Sander’s little heart desires. So he climbs out of the cot and tiptoes out of the room, blanket in tow. 

Sander smiles when he sees Robbe step out the door and onto the back patio, but it fades when Robbe drops the blanket on the couch and then punches Sander’s shoulder. 

“Ow!” Sander complains, rubbing his arm even though Robbe definitely didn’t hit him that hard. “What was that for?”

Robbe hisses, “You freaked me out! I thought a serial killer was trying to break in through the window or something!”

“You think a serial killer would knock before breaking in? Isn’t that against the whole point?” Robbe punches his arm again, and Sander complains, knocking his hand away. “Okay, okay, chill. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You should be.”

Sander rolls his eyes, but then quickly bounces back, grabbing the blanket Robbe had dropped on the couch and slinging it over his shoulder. Robbe barely has time to react, much less to ask what they’re doing, before Sander is grabbing his hand and dragging him off of the porch and into the sand, towards the sea.

It’s late. The stars are bright in the sky because there’s no light pollution out here, and even though it’s the dead of summer and warm, the sea breeze cools it down just enough to give a slight chill. Because everyone but them is asleep, the only sounds around them are of the waves on the shore and the rustling of beachgrass. 

There’s a bit of nostalgia that comes with being here. It’s not the same house or even the same beach, but being here with Sander still makes Robbe nostalgic for their first meeting. He remembers October 2019, how lonely he was and how he slept in the same bed as a girl he was only pretending to like, and how Sander came in and scanned his smile at the grocery store and got him on his knees for a pan (which Sander insists was unplanned, says he didn’t know that the pans were down there, but Robbe thinks he’s full of shit) and changed everything. He changed his life for the better.

Sander pulls him out to where the beachgrass stops, just at the edge where the sand goes from powdery and soft to compact and saturated from the high tides, and then he lays down the blanket and sits down on it, waiting for Robbe to join him.

Robbe does, easily. Sander doesn’t waste time in laying back once Robbe has sat down, so Robbe follows suit with that, too.

They don’t talk for a few moments, just laying there with the stars and the water, the smell of salt and brine and sea-plants.

It’s Robbe that breaks the quiet. “Not that I’m complaining,” he murmurs, because it’s important that Sander knows that, “but why are we laying on the beach at 1am?”

“I missed you,” Sander says simply, and Robbe would chuckle if he didn’t know that Sander wasn’t joking. “I was laying on that stupid, uncomfortable, ugly fucking couch and all I could think about was how much I missed you even though you were right down the hall.”

The downside to being at Sander’s family’s house rather than being with their friends was the lack of freedom. Robbe’s mom has never cared about Sander spending the night, especially considering she knows that Robbe spends most nights in Sander’s bed anyway, but Sander’s parents are different. And more than that, Sander’s grandparents are different. So the third bedroom in the beach house is being occupied by Sander’s grandmother, a sweet lady who absolutely adores Robbe, but that means Sander has to sleep on the couch and Robbe has to sleep on a cot in the room with his mom.

Sander, of course, threw a fit about it, and pouted the entire drive here because of it. Robbe’s mom had suggested that she would take the couch so Sander and Robbe could have the bedroom, but Sander’s mom looked as though she’d bitten a lemon when she said it, so Robbe’s mom dropped it immediately. And Robbe would never even consider stepping on anyone’s toes or being disrespectful by complaining.

Besides, Sander does enough complaining for the both of them.

“We’re adults, we can share a bed,” Sander continues, and Robbe does huff a laugh at that, because it’s the same spiel he’s been going on all day. “I don’t know why my mom is acting so conservative about it. She knows you basically live at my apartment with me, so what’s the difference if we sleep in the same bed here?”

“It’s just for a weekend,” Robbe says. It’s the same thing he’s been saying all day, too. They’re like broken records. “Sunday night, we’ll be back in your apartment and you can steal the blankets from me and put your cold feet on mine all night.”

He thinks that Sander is going to laugh or argue with him, always so affronted when Robbe teases him about stealing the blankets at night, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, Sander just turns his head so he’s facing Robbe. Robbe looks at him, too.

“What?” He asks.

Sander smiles, this small little hint of a thing, like he doesn’t really even mean to but just can’t help it. “Being here reminds me of when I first met you,” Sander admits, and Robbe hums and tells him that he’d been thinking about the same thing. “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Three years ago, I was dating Britt and crushing on you from afar.”

“Stalking me, you mean?” Robbe jokes, and Sander huffs. It’s dark outside, but Robbe knows without seeing it that Sander is blushing. “Taking pictures of me from across a parking lot, following me to the skatepark, tagging along on a beach trip with people you didn’t even know just to meet me…”

“Britt invited me!” Sander exclaims, and Robbe can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. Sander is always so suave and cool and confident that Robbe relishes in the moments that he can get him bashful and embarrassed. Their first meeting is always the easiest way to get Sander embarrassed. “Whatever. I wasn’t stalking you, I was pursuing you.”

Robbe hums. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.” Sander sighs again and reaches out to dig his fingers into Robbe’s side, and when Robbe tries to dodge the tickling, Sander just doubles down and pulls him flush into his side.

Robbe doesn’t mind. He settles his head right in the crook of Sander’s shoulder and turns on his side so he can rest an arm across Sander’s belly and hook his right leg over the top of Sander’s. Sander wraps his arm around Robbe’s back and his left hand settles on Robbe’s thigh, holding his leg where he’d entangled them.

And yeah. Robbe wouldn’t say this out loud because Sander would definitely use it to try and convince his parents that they should share a bed, but he did miss cuddling like this before going to sleep. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t fall asleep tonight, because he’s not used to sleeping without having Sander just there to his left.

“Anyway,” Sander continues, trying to brush past the topic, “I’m glad we’re here now. That beach trip wasn’t actually that fun if you really think about it.”

“You don’t think so?”

Sander snorts. “Fuck no. First of all, I was there with Britt and we all know how I felt about that. I also had to watch you get pranked and yell at your friends about that shit with your parents, and I couldn’t even follow you to make sure you were okay. I could never get you alone, the only time we really got to talk was at the supermarket and for like thirty seconds at the garbage cans. And god, don’t get me started on having to watch you with Noor. I love Noor, but I kind of hated her for a little bit there. Britt kept asking me if Noor did something to piss me off because I kept giving her dirty looks, and I’d never acted like that around her when she hung out with Britt around me.”

“Did you tell her that you were jealous?” Robbe teases. He trails the tip of his index finger along Sander’s jawline until he tilts his head down to look at him, so close that their noses could touch if they tried. “Did you tell her that you wanted to be the one kissing me?”

“Did you tell Noor how you felt?”

“I didn’t know I felt anything about you at the time,” Robbe murmurs. It’s half true. Of course he had an idea about his sexuality at the time, and he knew that Sander made him feel something. He couldn’t ignore the pull in his belly when Sander fed him the croque, or the anxious butterflies when they were acting like idiots in the supermarket, or the way he leaned in when he thought that Sander was going to kiss him before Luca interrupted them. But he was deep in denial too, far inside the closet with the lights off so that he couldn’t see the coathangers or the locked door and could pretend he was somewhere else.

He would’ve kissed Sander back if Luca hadn’t interrupted them. But he thinks that Chernobyl would’ve been inevitable, and it’s probably better that he and Sander became friends before Sander actually made the move. It would’ve been too easy to cut Sander off after that beach trip, to pretend it never happened and to never see Sander again.

Sander leans his head further down, closer to Robbe’s. Robbe thinks it has to be hurting his neck. “And now?” He asks, and the lilt in his voice makes it obvious that he’s poking and prodding for validation, looking for an answer he already knows. “Do you know how you feel about me now?”

“Of course I do.” Sander knows this, of course. Robbe doesn’t mind saying it, though.

“And how is that?”

Robbe pretends to think about it, touches his chin and hums contemplatively. It makes Sander laugh and hug him closer, until their chests are pressed together and their hearts could whisper to one another and hear every single word. “Well… I guess I think that you’re not as pretentious as I first thought. And a lot funnier than you came across at first, because that booking.com joke was bad.” Sander gasps and tries to argue, but Robbe speaks louder and over the top of him. “And I guess I feel like I love you. Quite a lot, actually.”

“A lot, hm?”

“So much.” He’s whispering now, smile and laughter gone. 

Rather than saying it back, Sander just turns to the side and finally presses their lips together. It’s closed mouth at first, just soft pecks, but then Sander opens his mouth and Robbe follows his lead, like always. He’d follow Sander to the edge of the world and over it, probably.

Sander shifts their weight so that Robbe is on his back, and then Sander moves to hover over the top of him, pressing Robbe’s back into the sand. He guides Robbe’s arm up and around his neck before moving his own to encircle Robbe’s waist, pulling as much of their bodies flush together as is possible without Sander literally being on top of him. Usually, Robbe doesn’t mind being completely underneath him, but the sand isn’t nearly as forgiving on his back as a mattress or comfortable couch.

The beachgrass tickles at the crown of Robbe’s head as they make out. He feels like the stupid teenager that he still technically is but that Sander isn’t, sneaking out of the house and away from parents just to make out under the stars. If he were bolder, he thinks they’d probably go further. 

But as it is, they pull away once their lips are dry and sore and their bodies start to protest at the awkward angles. Sander settles back on his side, head resting on his hand and propped up elbow, while Robbe stays laying on his back. Sander’s free hand stays on Robbe’s bicep, like he can’t stop touching him.

“I’ve been meaning to do that since we got together,” Sander tells him.

Robbe’s confused, though. “Do what? Make out with me? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve made out before. Done much more than that, actually.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Sander teases back, and his voice is sultrier than Robbe’s already thinning resolve can really handle. If they were here with friends instead of family, they would definitely be making it to third base out here. At minimum. “But I didn’t mean just making out. I meant making out on the beach, just like that.” He leans down, traces his breeze-cooled nose along Robbe’s jawline until he turns, giving Sander access to his neck. He should know better by now than to let Sander kiss him there when there’s a risk of someone seeing the hickey left behind, but he’s so weak, bending like a willow to Sander’s every desire. “That’s how you kissed Noor that day,” he whispers into Robbe’s skin, and Robbe understands immediately. 

Sander’s possessive, and Robbe loves it. He thinks that maybe he wouldn’t if Sander was possessive in an unhealthy or immature way, but he isn’t. He’s possessive in a hot way, in a putting his hand in Robbe’s back pocket when they’re at a club way, in a posting so many Instagram photos of him it may as well be a fanpage way, in a kissing Robbe the way Robbe kissed other people way. 

He asks, “You were watching me?” And then because he can’t help himself, he has to add, “That doesn’t exactly help your whole ‘I wasn’t stalking you’ case, Driesen.”

“What can I say? I’ve just always been crazy about you, IJzermans,” Sander murmurs back instantly, and Robbe practically melts. Sander presses one final kiss to the thin skin where Robbe’s jaw meets his ear, and then he pulls back with a stupid smug smirk, one that Robbe can only barely make out now that his eyes have adjusted to the dark. “I wanted to be the one you were kissing like that.”

Robbe reaches up to tap Sander’s chin, then lips, then nose. “The feeling was mutual,” Robbe reassures him. “Especially when I had to watch Britt sit in your lap and feed you marshmallows. That was torture.”

“You could’ve sat in my lap. I wouldn’t have said no.”

“Something tells me that Britt and Noor would’ve had something to say about it.”

Sander doesn’t dignify that with a response. He just leans back down and kisses Robbe again, and again and again and again, until Robbe can’t even hear the sound of the water anymore, too wrapped up in Sander and their kiss and the space (or lack thereof) between them.

Back before he met Sander, when he’d only ever kissed girls, he thought people were being dramatic when they said that just kissing someone can make the entire world fall away. The girls he kissed were nice enough, and Noor especially was a good kisser. He enjoyed kissing them–or, at least, he didn’t hate it. He wasn’t actively repulsed by it. But he never felt the sparks and the fireworks that people told him he should be feeling. He always just figured that either 1) he wasn’t kissing the right girl or 2) he just wasn’t a hopeless romantic like those people seemed to be. He figured they were naïve and too in love with love to realize that it really wasn’t all they made it out to be. Kissing was, to him, just pressing lips together. 

And then Sander kissed him, and he understood. He kissed Sander back, and he understood again. He kept kissing Sander and he realized that this is what it’s supposed to feel like, this is what poems and movies and books have been talking about. He kissed Sander and realized that he alone held the power to reduce Robbe’s world to nothing but him, but them.

Of course, then he went and made himself Robbe’s whole world anyway, so there really isn’t much that he has to make disappear anymore. Robbe’s obsessed with him in the best way possible.

“Say it back,” Robbe complains when they’ve pulled back again, breathing labored and back really starting to protest against the sand.

Sander helps Robbe sit up, moves so he’s sitting behind him and Robbe can sit between his legs, back resting comfortably against Sander’s chest. “Say what back?” He asks genuinely, as his hands move to rub the aches out of Robbe’s shoulders.

Robbe thinks this must be what heaven is. And if it isn’t, and if heaven is unattainable, he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t know how heaven could even begin to compare.

“That you love me.”

“Robin.” He says it in that tone, the one that says that Robbe should really know whatever he’s about to say. Robbe knows he’s going to say it anyway. Sander shifts them slightly, so they can look at each other when he says, “I’m going to ask you to marry me someday.”

Robbe’s turning nineteen in August. They’re way too young for marriage, and it won’t be happening any time soon. But the fact that Sander, who hates planning and thinking about the future and gets anxious and overwhelmed any time he has to confront it, is more confident about their future than he is about anything else… 

It’s so big. Sander is the best, most interesting, confident, sexy, cool, talented, smart, kind, charming, exciting, beautiful man in the world. Robbe wonders what the hell he did to deserve him.

“I love you,” Sander adds quietly, after several moments of Robbe not saying anything. Robbe wonders if he’d misinterpreted Robbe’s silence, if he took it as being too much, if he thinks that Robbe is anything other than absolutely fucking speechless.

Robbe nods. “I love you, too. And I’m going to say yes.” Robbe cradles his face, his hands warm against the coolness of Sander’s skin. They should probably head back inside sooner rather than later. “When you propose, I’m going to say yes.”

They kiss until they really, really can’t anymore, when their lips are sore and buzzing and Robbe’s starting to get so sleepy that he can’t keep his eyes open. Sander carries Robbe on his back and the blanket in his arms as they make their way back up the beach, Robbe trying his hardest not to fall asleep there.

The blanket gets abandoned on the outdoor couch since there’s sand all over it. They tiptoe back inside, and then stand in the hallway just hugging each other goodnight, neither one wanting to let go even though they’ll just be a hallway apart for a couple of hours and right back to being lovey-dovey and disgusting by morning.

It doesn’t surprise Robbe at all when, after at least three minutes of just standing there in each other’s arms, Sander asks, “Wanna lay down with me for a few minutes?” And Robbe knows better, knows that laying down on the couch with Sander is a one-way ticket and that he will not be getting back up. But he agrees anyway, tells himself and Sander that it’s just for five minutes, just so they can cuddle until they’re tired and sated enough for sleep.

The couch is long but fairly narrow, and really only fits Robbe’s or Sander’s body. But that doesn’t stop Sander from squeezing into the space between Robbe and the back of the couch, allowing Robbe to be the small spoon on the edge of the couch so he can get up easily when the five minutes are up. They squish together on the tiny ass couch, Sander holding tightly so Robbe doesn’t fall, and the five minutes come and go.

Rather than get up, Robbe just rolls over in Sander’s arms and tucks himself into his chest. Sander readjusts and holds him tighter. With one last press of Sander’s lips to Robbe’s forehead, they fall asleep. They can deal with the repercussions in the morning. For now, the world is just them alone.

"Marianne," he said, "I'm not a religious person,
but I do sometimes think God made you for me."
-Sally Rooney, "Normal People”