The Charm Offensive(28)

Dev knows, professionally speaking, getting drunk alone with Charlie Winshaw is maybe not the smartest thing he’s ever done, but it felt so good to finally open up to someone about everything with Ryan—to have someone listen, to have someone give him permission to let go of the Fun Dev mask a tiny bit. Just for a minute.

In his defense, he could not have predicted Charlie would start demanding he remove articles of clothing.

Charlie springs off the stool. “You need to take your shirt off so we can soak the stain.” He rushes into the small kitchen, flings open cupboards, pulling things down violently. “Why is there no white vinegar in this house?”

“Well, it’s a fake house.…”

“Dish soap will have to work.”

It isn’t until Charlie has filled a bowl with warm water and Dawn dish soap that Dev realizes what’s going on. “It’s just a shirt, Charlie. They come in Costco three-packs. Don’t stress about it.”

“I can’t just not stress about it!” Charlie’s fists slam onto the countertop. “My mind doesn’t work that way!”

And oh.

Until this exact moment, Dev assumed Charlie’s social awkwardness was the product of generalized anxiety and too many Friday nights spent in front of a computer screen instead of out in the world with other humans. It hadn’t occurred to him it could be something else.

Briefly, viciously, Ryan’s “head case” creeps back into his mind. But then he’s thinking about Charlie’s constant fear of saying the wrong thing, and Charlie’s fear of letting other people get close, and Dev wonders if maybe there isn’t something very specific Charlie Winshaw doesn’t want other people to see.

The anger fades from Charlie’s posture as quickly as it appeared, and Dev crosses the kitchen and puts a cautious hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Okay,” he says quietly. “We’ll soak the shirt.”

Dev pulls the T-shirt up over his head, and Charlie’s eyes travel the distance between his clavicle and his hipbones before they fix themselves back on the bowl of soapy water. “Um, we should soak it for fifteen minutes.” Charlie sets the timer on his phone. “And then put it in the wash.”

“Okay,” Dev says again. He knows the signs of Charlie’s anxiety now—the way his shoulders rise up to his ears, the way his eyebrows compress together, his mouth a painful grimace, his eyes hazy. Dev starts tapping a pattern over and over again with two fingers onto Charlie’s shoulder.

Charlie watches Dev’s fingers. “How do you…?” He seizes an awkward breath. “It’s Morse code. For ‘calm.’?”

“Is it? Huh.” Dev keeps drumming the pattern. His voice is low, quiet. Calm. He’s not sure where the calm is coming from, but calm is what Charlie needs, so Dev pulls it up from some secret wellspring he didn’t know he had. “I’ve seen you do this on set when you’re anxious. When it gets like this, how can I help?”

Charlie swallows. “No one has ever asked me that before.” He looks back at Dev, and his eyes linger this time. They’re close enough for Dev to smell his oatmeal body wash and feel the way Charlie tenses, tightens a bit beneath Dev’s fingers. Dev is always so careful to not look at Charlie fully, but Charlie’s right here, in freckle-counting range, letting Dev help him through this, and Dev is overwhelmed by how desperately he wants to help.

“Take your deep breaths,” Dev whispers. Charlie takes three breaths—always exactly three—whenever he needs to calm down, and he takes a shaky one now and holds it in.

“Exhale.” Charlie does, and they’re so close, Charlie’s breath is humid on Dev’s throat. “Again.”

Charlie takes another slow, painful breath, and Dev can see it strain against the buttons on Charlie’s shirt.

“Last one.”

Charlie takes his third breath, deep and clear, and Dev slips his fingers into Charlie’s hair as he waits for the exhale. He teases apart Charlie’s thick blond curls, massaging his scalp. In this moment, it feels like Charlie is wide open for him. A week of puzzle pieces, sci-fi shows, and the smallest hints of a hard childhood, but at two in the morning in the guesthouse kitchen, it almost feels like he’s glimpsing Charlie Winshaw in his entirety—anxious and obsessive and still so fucking beautiful—leaning into Dev like there’s some secret part of Charlie that wants to let other people in but doesn’t know how. “I’m sorry I’m such a… burden.”

That word opens a fissure inside Dev’s chest. Burden. The way he felt as a kid every time his mom got off work early to take him to therapy; the way he felt every time his dad just wanted to spend a fun Saturday together, but he was too restless or too lethargic, too loud or too quiet, spontaneously crying in front of a Rodin sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The way he felt every time they sat him down and begged him to just tell them what was wrong, and even though he loved words—loved using words to build stories and escape hatches from the real world—he could never find the right ones to help his parents understand his heart and his mind.

“You’re not a burden, Charlie. Let me take care of you. It’s my job.”

For one more second, he does. Charlie exhales and arches into Dev’s hand. Just as quickly, he pulls away, tripping into the cabinets behind him.