* * *
“When did you come out to your parents?” Charlie asks hours later, after he’s managed to undo Dev’s bad mood with a second dinner, a fashion show involving a stolen frangipani robe, and lots of kissing.
“God, I love when you talk dirty to me,” Dev says, nipping at his ear. They’re tangled up on top of the bed, the ceiling fan whirling, an empty plate of midnight chicken satay on the bedside table.
“Dev.”
Dev sighs, sits up, crosses his legs. “My sexuality wasn’t much of a mystery to my parents. When I was five, I told my mom I wanted to marry Aladdin, and my parents just gave me space to be exactly who I was without making a big deal out of it.”
Charlie hugs a pillow tight against his chest.
Dev pushes his glasses up his nose. “Do you… Have you thought about coming out? As bisexual? I mean, in like two years, after the show airs and everything settles down?”
“Well, I don’t think I am bisexual, actually,” Charlie mumbles. Dev props himself back on the pillows and stares at Charlie expectantly. He’s not sure why, after everything else he’s shared with Dev, this still feels hard to talk about. “I… I don’t experience sexual attraction very often. I mean, almost never. Present company excluded.” Dev does a charming little bow at that. “And I’m not really sure if that’s because the way I was raised taught me to repress the fact that I’m attracted to men, or if it’s because I’m maybe”—he pushes his hair off his forehead—“maybe on the asexual spectrum? Or, I don’t know. Parisa used this word demisexual, and I think maybe that could be me? Or maybe graysexual, which I googled, and it means you only rarely experience sexual attraction. I mean, I know I enjoy both giving and receiving sexual pleasure, but I don’t know what that means.”
He catches himself mid-spiral and takes a breath. “I guess I’m saying, I still have a lot to figure out about all that, so I don’t think I’m ready to come out as anything.”
“That’s okay.” Dev reaches over to touch his knee. “Sexuality isn’t always a straight line from closeted to out-of-the-closet. You can take time to explore and evolve and figure out exactly what kind of queer you are, if that even matters to you.”
The room is silent except for the whorl of the ceiling fan.
“Sorry, do you not like that word?” Dev backpedals. “What letter of the LGBTQIAP+ alphabet are you?”
“No, queer is fine. It’s just—you wouldn’t care if I didn’t have it all figured out?”
Dev nudges Charlie’s shin with his toe. “Why would I care?”
“I’m twenty-eight. Shouldn’t I already know?”
“Some people know at five, some people know at fifty. It’s not a race.”
“And it wouldn’t bother you? If we were together?”
Dev stills on the bed across from him. “Together?”
Charlie feels his face flush. It’s been a long day, and he shouldn’t cross the invisible demarcation of time by referencing the future. He only just got Dev to agree to three weeks. “Like, hypothetically. In an imaginary alternate timeline where we could be together after the show.”
Dev scratches his unshaved jaw. “In a hypothetical, imaginary, alternate timeline would I be bothered by your sexual ambiguity?” He makes a show of considering. “Um, no.”
Charlie’s already humiliated himself enough with this conversational tangent, and he should move on, but this line of questioning suddenly feels like a stain of bourbon on Dev’s shirt. He’s got to get it out—all the way out, right now. “Would it bother you that I don’t have any other sexual experience?”