After their fifteenth anniversary, an unnamed narrator wishes to have an average life with his boyfriend. He wants a marriage and a baby. Unfortunately, that life is impossible for them to achieve.

"It wasn’t like Kasper stopped being enough for him, but a new hole formed nonetheless after their anniversary. He began realizing that some day they would both be dead, and then there would be nothing left as evidence of their love."

Markus van Dijk discovers that his old friend and ex-flatmate, Dante Kuiper, has died. He should have known, the universe had given him signs.

"The thought of death kept him awake that night, and without sleep he could do nothing but think about death. He wondered, and wondered, and wondered: what had Dante done that day?"

Note: This work is a short story connected to a longer work I have in mind. Because I'm not 100% sure if this work will ever be completed, I'm keeping this as a standalone for now.

A little story about procrastination and writing.

"When you get home, you feel like you could write a hundred different stories. All of them good. Your brain is overflowing with ideas. Finally! By the time that you get your shoes off, though, they’ve already disappeared."

For years, Luuk kept his trauma to himself. Until he meets Alex at a party and quickly falls in love. They move in together, live a comfortable life. Then, Alex gets depressed and Luuk realizes everything about their life might be shattered if they keep refusing to talk about what matters.

"But, perhaps some day he could talk about them. In his own time, whenever he wanted. In that way, keeping the details inside felt like a good kind of waiting, of the knowledge that if he ever wanted to talk, there would be someone waiting for him, someone who already knew him."

TW: mentions of CSA, suicide and physical abuse (the physical abuse is more graphic in one scene).

Ever since he was a teenager, Timo has been obsessed with vampires and the concept of eternal love. He begins to suspect that his partner has turned into one.

"It was easy with those boys and girls, especially with the boys who would go back to their own city hours away. With none of them did he have to think about the next day, let alone forever."

This story does involve sexual scenes.

Jen's fiancé Viktor goes missing a month before their wedding. These are the moments before and after.

"A great grief formed in his heart, like a black hole swallowing away everything good. In the distance, he could still hear Elena, but he no longer wanted her. He did not need to go to her home. All he needed was Viktor, sleepy in the backseat, complaining about work in the kitchen. His grief for Vik didn’t remain in his heart alone, or his mind, it took place as a tingling in his fingertips, which would never touch the other’s soft skin again. Jens felt it in the dryness of his mouth, which would never again laugh at one of Viktor’s jokes."

TW: mentions of murder.

When Adriaan moves back home to Nijmegen after having lived in Cambridge for years, he starts to look back on the live he has lived with Daan, the reason why he moved to Cambridge in the first place, and why he moved back.

"Words quickly began to fail him, and I want to go home no longer made sense. He’d never been home, had he? Not in the place where he couldn’t simply be himself, where he couldn’t be honest. His mam always had a way of making him feel embarrassed. He was strangely afraid that she could somehow see that, ever since he reached puberty, he no longer felt at place within his body of wiry limbs and never ending love for the wrong person. Adriaan tried to remember the last time he had felt at home: sixteen, a cigarette between slippery fingers, wet shoulders, cold porcelain, and of course, Daan."

TW: mentions of child abuse and homophobia, one more graphic scene.

Christmas, 2001. Adriaan moved back home from England three years ago. He hasn't seen his sister in over a decade. All he has are his memories and an old card.

"He should have protected one of the things he loved the most, just so he wouldn’t lose the other one — Madelief, once a baby sleepy in his arms. When she first learned to walk, she took a step towards him."

Title translation: Madelief, Altijd Wachtend is Dutch for Madelief, Always Waiting (fun fact, naming a child Madelief in Dutch is the same as naming a child Daisy in English, they're the same flowers!)

It's been a while since Sam came home from the clinic intact, and yet the past continues to haunt Noah.

"For a while, the other man hadn’t been alright, and now it seemed like he was trying really hard to be, or at least to appear like he was. It made Noah nervous, of course he wanted his boyfriend to be happy, but he didn’t want Sam to just be pretending. It wasn’t something they could easily have a conversation about, though. What kind of dickhead would say are you really hungry, do you really want that? Or do you just want me to think that you want it?"

TW: mentions of an eating disorder, specifically bulimia.

The term clinic is used to refer to an eating disorder clinic (eetstoorniskliniek) and not an outpatient clinic. I made this choice to better reflect the mental health system here in the Netherlands (for people with eating disorders, at least).

Sam gets sick, Noah can't help but worry that there's something more going on.

"Only one explanation satisfied the knot of worry surrounding his lungs, the worst of them all: a raw throat, an empty stomach even after dinner. Sam, dealing with it all on his own."

TW: mentions of an eating disorder, specifically bulimia.

When Sam goes to see a movie with his older niece, he doesn't quite care about the plot. All he can think about is the pretty brunet actor, even though he feels like he shouldn't.

"The next morning, he threw the picture out on his way to school. But he knew that he wouldn’t even need it to repeat his actions from the previous night. Removing the physical evidence of his lust wouldn’t stop the monster in his stomach from lighting up again. After all, he had already memorized every bit of the man’s face."