The Charm Offensive, page 19
“I know.”
The cable car arrives at the observatory on top of the mountain, and as they spill out with everyone else, Dev pulls back his hand. Charlie understands. He’s the star of a reality show, and he has six girlfriends, and any one of these tourists could recognize him and take a picture—a picture that could end up on any number of gossip sites. But for one glorious minute, Dev was holding his hand in public, and some things are too spectacular for fear.
He waits until they’re past the observation deck, where the throngs of tourists lessen, dwindling down even more once they’re on the hiking trail to the other side of the mountain. When it’s just the two of them, he reaches out again to take Dev’s hand. Dev intertwines their fingers, and Charlie had no idea such a simple gesture could feel so huge inside his chest.
The hike out is perfect, all breathtaking vistas and Dev’s hand snug in his. The hike back to the cable car is less great. When the sun starts to go down, the temperature drops considerably, and Dev gets hungry, and then tired, and then plagued by foot pain.
“I told you not to wear flip-flops.”
Dev collapses onto a rock. “I know, goddamn you!” He screams in agony, takes off a shoe, and throws it into a king protea bush.
“Okay, you are not Reese Witherspoon in Wild.”
“I mean, we have similar cheekbones.”
Charlie hunts down the rogue flip-flop and puts it on Dev’s foot like Dev is a very cranky Cinderella. “I’m sorry I’ve planned such a terrible practice date and that you’re so miserable.” Dev rolls his eyes. “Now, come on. I’ll carry you. Climb on my back.”
“I’m not a child, Charlie.”
“No, you are a grown man having a temper tantrum and throwing your flip-flops at innocent flowers.”
“I have blisters!”
“Yes, I know, sweetheart. Come on.”
Dev consents to be carried half a mile back to the cable car, at least until they’re around other people again, his hipbones stabbing into Charlie’s back, legs wrapped around his waist like the sleeves of his sweater, chin on his shoulder.
“This isn’t a terrible date,” Dev says into his ear. And maybe it’s because they can’t see each other’s faces, but Dev takes a sharp breath. “It’s maybe the best date I’ve ever had.”
* * *
They promised to meet up with Parisa and Jules for dinner at a Caribbean restaurant called Banana Jam Cafe. When they arrive, Jules and Parisa are already there, lounging on a patio under a red umbrella, enjoying their second round of Jam Jars, which have turned their tongues electric pink.
“What did you boys get up to today?” Parisa asks, putting her feet in Charlie’s lap as soon as he sits down.
“Charlie carried me down a mountain.”
“Not down. More… across.”
“Heroic and manly nonetheless.”
“The two words my father most often used to describe me.”
They order too much food and consume too many pink alcoholic drinks, and Charlie tries to pay attention to the story Parisa is telling about her misadventures with Jules exploring the other side of Cape Town, but Dev is here, and he said their date was the best he’s ever had, and Charlie is struggling to focus on anything else.
“So, do you want to go?” Jules is saying. To him, it would seem.
“Go where?”
“To the party tonight,” Jules clearly repeats. “The one we just told you about. We ran into those guys who are here filming some movie about pirates, and they invited us.”
“I’ve decided it’s a good networking opportunity for Julesies,” Parisa says, “who is way too brilliant to still be working as a PA.”
Jules beams at Parisa.
“You in?”
The last thing Charlie wants to do is sit in a hotel room while a bunch of Hollywood dude-bros get high and hit on Jules and Parisa, where he won’t be allowed to touch Dev for another several hours. “I think not. I’m pretty tired.”
“Dev?” Jules asks, shooting him a look that’s half optimism, half already-accepted defeat. “Do you want to come to the party with us?”
“I have foot blisters. Horrible, monstrous lesions on my feet. Pustules, Jules, and I can’t—”
“Enough. I get it. You’re both losers.”
“Such losers,” Parisa says, nudging Charlie’s stomach with her toe. “We’re going to this party, and we’re going to be out all night, and you’re going to sit in our hotel suite, all alone, just the two of you, watching The Expanse.”
Parisa winks at him, and the implication lands. They’ll have the suite to themselves. For hours.
Dev will be in their room, in their bed, and Charlie will be allowed to touch him in whatever way Dev wants. He looks over at Dev, who swallows dramatically as soon as their eyes meet, and Charlie remembers his forgotten fantasy of tracing the distance from Dev’s mouth to the hidden parts of him.
Fun fact: in South Africa, servers will never bring you the bill unless you ask for it, so you’re allowed to remain at a restaurant for as long as you want.
Charlie asks for the bill.
Dev
They don’t touch at all in the Uber, because Jules is sitting between them, with Parisa in the front, drunkenly flirting with their driver. And they don’t touch in the elevator, and they don’t touch once they’re in the hotel room, sitting on opposite ends of the couch while Jules and Parisa change their clothes and pregame with a bottle of chenin blanc. Even when the hotel door clicks shut behind them—Parisa giving one last suggestive wave that seems to imply she’s not quite as oblivious as Jules—they still don’t touch.
So Dev cues up the next episode of The Expanse on his laptop for some ungodly reason, and Charlie’s sitting three feet away, watching the beautiful man on the computer screen like he really does only care about the science. On the one hand: good. Dev’s already let this thing with Charlie go too far, but there’s a distinct difference between kissing the star of their show and having sex with the star of their show, and one will sound distinctly worse when it’s reported by the gossip bloggers, who will use Dev’s actions as further proof of Ever After’s inherent immorality.
But on the other hand: they have the entire hotel suite to themselves, and Charlie planned them a perfect date, and shouldn’t a practice date end with practice sex?
Practice sex. God, that will sound terrible in the legal briefings.
Maybe it’s best if they just watch television all night. Dev doesn’t even know if Charlie wants to have sex.
“Um. Dev?” Charlie coughs from the other side of the couch.
Dev turns, and Charlie isn’t on the other side of the couch at all. He’s right there, leaning into Dev, pinning him against the back cushions, kissing him wildly. And thank God.
Dev twists his hands into Charlie’s hair, his legs around Charlie’s legs, because somehow, this makes the most sense. Not Charlie with the six remaining women, but Charlie here, with him.
Dev wrestles his way out of his jean jacket without breaking contact with Charlie’s mouth and is pissed they can’t do the same with Charlie’s sweater. He’s even more pissed that Charlie is so profoundly bad at removing clothing when it really counts, but then the sweater’s gone, and his T-shirt, too, and Dev’s not mad at all. He pulls off his own shirt, and then Charlie’s enormous hands are roving his skin, touching every inch of him.
“Bedroom,” Charlie pants into his collarbone. “I want you in our bed.”
Dev’s heart explodes like a glitter bomb inside him, and he’s barely able to follow through with Charlie’s request. They stumble from the couch to the bedroom, tripping over each other’s feet, kicking off each other’s shoes. Dev is dimly aware of the fact they maybe shouldn’t leave a trail of their clothes through the suite, but he’s distracted by Charlie’s hair and Charlie’s mouth—by pushing Charlie down onto the bed and falling to his knees on the carpet in front of him.
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 is so 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 this at 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 with anyone? 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 the fucking show.”
“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’m terrified of 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 realization and 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 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.
Dev listens and says nothing, and never stops playing with Charlie’s hair. The sharing is even scarier than the sex because it’s another barrier, another line he never thought he’d be able to cross with someone. It’s the type of intimacy he’s avoided the most strictly, convinced he could never trust anyone with these parts of himself. Dev accepts every part of him like it’s nothing and everything. “I think I really, really like you,” Charlie tells Dev’s sternum.
The confession hangs between them for a second. “Two reallys?” Dev finally says, and Charlie can hear the smile in his voice. “And you haven’t even seen what I can do with my mouth yet?”
Charlie laughs and Dev flips them over so it’s Charlie with his back against the mattress and Dev looking down at him. Dev isn’t smiling anymore. Charlie stops laughing. Dev kisses his collarbone, bites at his nipples, licks the vertical line down the center of his abdomen like he did that night in New Orleans when Charlie stopped things from going any further.
