Charlie flops onto the bed and tries to cover his face with his hands to hide his blush. “I know. She’s awful.”
“Why did you want to show me this?”
He squints at Dev through a slit in his fingers. “Um…”
“Oh, Charlie,” Dev says in a voice that’s half-sweet and half-patronizing as hell. “You know I don’t need to do the things Parisa vividly depicted on these index cards to feel satisfied, right?” Dev reaches over and rubs soothing circles on Charlie’s stomach. “I meant what I said. I don’t care about your lack of experience. I am very satisfied. I don’t need anything else.”
Charlie takes a deep breath and tries to remember the rewards of being brave enough to ask for what you want. “But what if I wanted to try something else?”
Dev stills again, and Charlie reaches up and carefully removes Dev’s glasses, sets them next to the chicken satay. “Charlie,” Dev starts, his throat coated with something. There is a question in those two syllables, and Charlie answers it by straddling Dev and sliding their bodies together. He spreads his hand across Dev’s chest, his fingers wide, and wishes his hands were larger, so he could always be touching all of Dev.
“Charlie,” Dev tries again, succeeds this time. “We don’t have to—”
“I know, but I want you to. Do you, um. Do you want to… with me?”
“Good God, yes.” Dev arches up and makes a mess of trying to find Charlie’s mouth, clutching at the waistband of his sweatpants and catching his teeth on Charlie’s chin.
“I might be awkward, though,” Charlie warns him.
“You better be awkward. The awkwardness is what does it for me, honestly.”
Charlie laughs. Dev reaches up to take Charlie’s face in both hands.
“I mean it.” His voice goes soft, coaxing. It’s the voice he uses on set when Charlie’s freaking out, its pitch and melody perfectly tuned to Charlie’s anxiety. “That first night, when you were nervous sweating and you had vomit in your chin dimple…” Dev lowers his hands to Charlie’s shoulders, then traces them down over the contours of his chest. “Damn, you were beautiful.”
Charlie falls headfirst into a long, hot kiss that doesn’t end until they’re both naked and breathless and hard. Dev holds him impossibly close before he shifts on the mattress and tells Charlie exactly what he needs to hear. “I mean it, Charlie. I don’t like you despite some of your characteristics,” Dev says, and it feels like he’s talking to himself as much as Charlie, like the words are caught in an echo chamber made for two. “I like all of you. You know that, right?”
Hearing Dev say what Charlie knew in his heart—he didn’t know it was possible to love Dev more, for love to become a bottomless well inside of him he could spend his whole life filling. Coming together with Dev in this new way makes the well inside of him pour over. It feels like an unzipping of his skin, as if he’s stepping outside this costume version of himself to become his actual self—that he’s discovering something true buried so deep he thought he would never reach that person, but there he is, and Dev is with him, holding his hand, guiding him through.
In the middle of the night, he wakes up reaching out for Dev, but he’s already there, arms wrapped up tight around Charlie. “I would choose you,” Charlie whispers into the darkness.
Even though Dev’s eyes are closed, Charlie’s pretty sure he hears him.
Dev
I would choose you.
That’s what Charlie said. I would choose you.
But today, Charlie is not choosing Dev. Bali went by too quickly in a haze of incense and Charlie’s skin, and now they’re at another Crowning Ceremony. Tonight, Charlie will choose three women to continue onward to Home Kingdom dates, and after Home Kingdom dates, Charlie will choose his top two, and at no point in the next fifteen days is Charlie going to hold out a tiara and ask Dev if he’s interested in becoming his prince.