“If I’m a bird, you’re a bird,” Charlie says. Dev gapes at him. “Yes, I’ve seen the movie. I didn’t grow up under a rock. And The Notebook is a prime example of the problematic tendencies in popular romantic media, and—”
Dev smashes his face against Charlie’s, just to shut him up, and they kiss and kiss and kiss again, with Dev’s arms twisted around Charlie’s neck.
“Any other problematic romantic fantasies I can fulfill while we’re here?”
“Unless you have a pottery wheel or the prow of a ship stashed away in your meticulously organized luggage, I’m not sure what you can do for me.”
Charlie grins. “I think there are a few things I can do for you.”
He carries Dev into the bathroom and sets him down on the closed toilet seat with such impressive muscle control, Dev is positive it’s the sexiest thing that’s ever happened in human history. Charlie turns on the shower and pulls off his shirt.
“To be clear, mixing cleanliness with sex is your romantic fantasy.”
But then Charlie undresses him with painstaking care, folding his shirt, his shorts, his underwear, all in a neat little pile he sets down beside the sink, and that is somehow the sexiest thing that has ever happened. Dev gives Charlie full control, lets him haul them both into the shower, lets him position his body under the warm water, lets him lather his hands with organic oatmeal body wash and send those hands up Dev’s chest, covering them both in suds.
Charlie is naked and on display, and Dev can’t believe he gets to look. Charlie is carved from marble and meant to be showcased at some Italian museum, but it’s Dev’s body he treats like a precious antiquity. Charlie scrubs his forearms, his shoulder blades, his kneecaps. He scrubs the inside of his thighs until Dev has to remind himself to breathe. No one has ever touched him as tenderly as Charlie does, as lovingly. It’s never been this good, this natural with anyone else. No one else has ever seen this much of him.
Charlie kneels down in front of him.
Breathe, he reminds himself. Just breathe.
Water sluices down Charlie’s nose, across his clavicle, traveling the horizontal fault line of his abdominal muscles, and Dev hunches forward to protect Charlie from the water as he takes Dev in his mouth.
“Oh, love,” he says involuntarily. Everything he says and does becomes involuntary, his other hand sweeping through Charlie’s hair and holding on tight. He says please and thank you, and he falls into Charlie’s lap when it’s over, sitting on the floor of their hotel shower, wrapped up in wet limbs.
Charlie pulls him into a rough kiss, and when Charlie mutters, “I love the way you taste,” Dev bursts out laughing. The sound is wet, echoing off the shower walls, and Charlie looks both offended and pleased with himself.
They only dry off and don’t bother with clothes as they spread out on the cool sheets in their bed. They rock-paper-scissors for who gets to choose what they watch, and Dev wins and still chooses The Expanse, even though he doesn’t understand the plot. Charlie props himself against the headboard and Dev props himself against Charlie. It’s never ever been this good.
Dev toes his laptop a safe distance away and reaches up to kiss Charlie—a heady kiss that’s more hands and teeth than anything else. But when they pull apart again, he does something new. He tries talking, tries opening up for Charlie the way Charlie opened up for him.
He tells Charlie about his perfect childhood: vacations in Europe and summers in the Outer Banks, every material need met. Parents who loved him and supported him, always; a brain that never stopped and a heart that was too big.
He was always a happy kid, quick to make friends, a natural performer, which made it all the more confusing when he started going through phases where he became sullen and withdrawn, phases where he’d cry at the smallest things and fake being sick to avoid going to school for days at a time. His parents would worry during these phases and argue late into the night about doctors and medications and specialists who studied chakras and energy flow. They loved him, and he hated that he was causing them pain. So it just became easier to pretend to be Fun Dev all the time, to put on a smile so he wasn’t such a burden. After all, he had no reason to be sad. Everything was always fine.