Page 70 of The Charm Offensive
Charlie is flushed and pouting, his gray eyes delirious from alcohol and Dev.This makes sense.He reaches up and unfastens Charlie’s jeans.
“Dev—” Charlie starts, but Dev already has Charlie’s pants down his hips, revealing his gray boxer briefs and his erection straining through his underwear. “Wait a minute.”
Dev waits, hands paused on Charlie’s muscular thighs. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.” Charlie exhales, and Dev watches the way that one small action creates a dozen ripples across Charlie’s chest and abdominal muscles. “Yes, God,yes, but I need a minute. It’s not that I don’t want to, obviously.…” He embarrassingly gestures to his groin in a shy way that isso Charlie, and Dev’s heart pole vaults up to his throat. “I really, really want to, but the thing is… I… I haven’t… I haven’t done this before.”
Dev laughs a little and kisses the inside of Charlie’s thigh. “Yes, love, I was able to guess you’ve never been with a man before.”
“No, Dev.” Charlie chokes on his words, coughs them out. “I haven’t done thisat all.”
Before Dev can fully process this revelation, Charlie flops backward and covers his face with his hands, breathing heavily into his fingers. Dev scrambles up onto the bed. “Charlie, look at me.Charlie!” He pries away Charlie’s hands. “Are you telling me you’ve never been withanyone? Ever? Like, in any way?”
Charlie makes a gasping sound like a dying animal and curls himself into a tight ball.
“But you’re twenty-eight!”
“Jesus, Dev, I know! I’m a freak!”
“You’re not a freak. Come on.” He grabs Charlie’s shoulder and pins him on his back. “Stop. Look at me. There’s nothing wrong with you. I just—I can’t believe you came on this show. You realize you’re expected to have sex with two women during week nine when we do overnight dates, right?”
“Well, that is not happening for a number of reasons!” Charlie shouts at the ceiling.
“The show loves to exploit a virgin, but usually they know about it going into the season, and—”
“Dev, please stop talking about thefuckingshow.”
“Right.Right.Sorry.” Dev rubs Charlie’s stomach until they both calm down a little. “We don’t have to do anything tonight.”
“No, I… I want to.” Charlie puts his hand over Dev’s, pulls both hands tight against his stomach. “In the past, the emotions stuff, and the touching, and all the little social interactions it takes to get to this level of intimacy with a person. Even with people I’ve dated—it wasn’t just that I wasn’t attracted to them. I’ve never wanted anyone to see me that vulnerable. I… I’mterrifiedof letting you see me.”
Dev knows Charlie is handing him something important, something he’s never trusted anyone else to hold before. “Oh, love,” Dev says, leaning in to kiss the cluster of freckles to the left of his nose. “I already see you.”
Charlie keeps his promise and blushes, and Dev wants to kiss every pink splotch. He’s not sure he’s ever wanted someone like he wants Charlie in this moment, and there’s nothing Charlie could say to change that.
Dev pushes aside the sobering enormity of that realizationand reaches out for a pump of the lotion Charlie keeps by the bed. “I’m going to touch you,” Dev tells him, like he did the first night of filming, like he’s done a dozen times since. His fingers hesitate at the waistband of Charlie’s underwear. “Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?”
“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 notokay.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’sVCR when he was six so he could learn how to put it back together.Heis 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.Moreabouthimself.
He’s not sure he could’ve experienced this with anyone but Dev. Dev, whoseeshim, 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 thismeansabout 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?”
