The Charm Offensive(64)

“Okay,” Charlie whispers. Charlie winces when Dev first strokes him, then settles into the touch. The feeling of Charlie against his palm makes Dev feel drunk and stupid, but he’s slow and careful with Charlie, because slow and careful is what Charlie needs, and because Dev is a little bit obsessed with being what Charlie needs.

Charlie arches into his hand. He’s quiet and shy the whole time, biting down on his lower lip, bunching his fists into the comforter, barely letting himself breathe. Dev’s eyes never leave his face as he gets hard over the knowledge that no one else has ever been lucky enough to see Charlie like this. Only him. He watches every ounce of tension slowly melt out of Charlie and savors the exact moment where no part of him is pinched together.

Dev wishes he could take a picture of this version of Charlie, too.





Charlie


“Okay?”

Charlie nods, even though, no. He’s very much not okay. He’s something else entirely.

Dev slips off the bed, and Charlie stays on his back, unable to move. He feels like he’s dissolved into the mattress, fused with the sheets, and he stares up at the ceiling, trying to remember how breathing works. It feels like when he took apart his family’s VCR when he was six so he could learn how to put it back together. He is the VCR—everything laid bare, the inside parts on the outside, wires exposed.

Here is this thing he put off for so long, that he never thought he would be able to share with another person without humiliation and shame, and now he’s crossed the invisible barrier of his mind to find something surprising on the other side. Himself. More about himself.

He’s not sure he could’ve experienced this with anyone but Dev. Dev, who sees him, who tried to connect with him, emotionally, from the first night. Who never accepted his stammering or his evasiveness. Who pushed and pushed and kept pushing until he bulldozed his way right inside Charlie’s heart. He thinks about Parisa and her two-foot spectrum and what this means about him.

There’s a pressure behind his eyes, building in his throat, but he fights off the inexplicable urge to cry. Happy tears, he thinks. Dev returns to the bed with his black skinny jeans and exposed chest as he leans over to kiss Charlie’s temple.

“Where did you go?”

“I thought you would want me to wash my hands right away,” Dev says in a low voice. “I grabbed your wet wipes, in case you wanted to—”

And then Charlie is crying. He can’t help it, because Dev knows him so well. Dev knows him and understands him and wants him anyway, and Charlie has never been this attracted to anyone else.

“Oh, love.” Dev takes his face with hands smelling like hotel soap, and surely he must know. Dev must see the way those two words tear down all of Charlie’s defenses every time he says them. Dev says oh, love, and some dormant thing—some part of Charlie that has secretly always wanted to be someone’s love—comes to life inside him.

“Why are you crying, Charlie?”

“Because you’re perfect.” And he sits up so he can do what he’s been fantasizing about since night one. He licks Dev’s Adam’s apple. He follows the path toward his collarbone, his breastbone, the bottom of his rib cage—until Dev is beneath him, skinny and sharp and his, at least for right now. “You’re so beautiful,” Charlie whispers as he pulls off his jeans.

Dev laughs. “I’m really not.”

“You are. You so, so are.” The skinny jeans get caught around Dev’s ankles, and Charlie tugs, almost falls off the bed with how desperately he needs these pants off. When he looks up, his eyes catch Dev’s across the six feet four inches of Dev’s body, and there’s something shining in Dev’s eyes that Charlie can’t understand. He wants to understand every damn thing about him. “Can I please see you naked?”

There is victory in being brave enough to ask for what he wants. Dev makes a strangled sound of consent and lets Charlie undress him fully, and there is all of Dev.

Charlie can’t wait another second to touch him. “Fuck,” Dev says as Charlie frantically licks his palm. “Fuck,” he says again when Charlie wraps his hand around him. Dev says fuck a lot as Charlie makes a sloppy showing of the whole affair, too eager, too enthusiastic to remember to be self-conscious. Dev comes apart at his touch anyway, and after, Charlie doesn’t want to wash his hands; he wants to kiss Dev until there is no space left between them.

So he does. He presses their slick chests together, pushes Dev back into the mattress, and kisses his mouth, his jaw, his throat, kisses him until his lips go numb. Then he places his ear to Dev’s sternum and listens to the sound of his heart while Dev’s fingers tease apart his curls one at a time.

He feels unlocked. Like he has nothing left to try to hide, no reason not to show Dev the rest of him. So Charlie starts talking into the low light of the room, saying things he’s never said aloud, not even to Parisa. Talking about his childhood, about his brothers, about his parents. About sitting alone at lunch every day in elementary school because the other kids were afraid of his intensity and his differences, about the bullies at recess. About the high school therapist who told him exercise might help reduce his anxiety, about consequently becoming obsessed with exercise. About how the same classmates who called him names in the hallway and threw milk cartons at him on the bus suddenly wanted to talk to him after he became obsessed with exercising. About being so desperate to escape his small town and his small life and his small-minded family, only to arrive at Stanford at sixteen and discover there are small minds everywhere.