* * *
He’s not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do when you discover your sort-of friend who you also like to kiss might have clinical depression, but he figures he could start by talking to Dev. Except when he and Parisa get back to set, Dev is nowhere to be found. Ryan informs him that Dev’s gone home sick with Jules. Charlie has to wait until they’re done filming for the day.
When they get back to the hotel, he goes straight to Dev’s room, where the “Do Not Disturb” sign hangs on the doorknob. Jules answers, looking her usual combination of annoyed and exhausted, with a twinge of sadness tucked away in the corners of her eyes. “He won’t talk to me about what’s wrong.”
“Let me try.”
He steps into the room alone. The air is stale and thick with the scent of unwashed things, and a kick of anxiety rockets through him at the filth. But then he sees Dev cocooned on the bed, the comforter sealed tight above his head, and he’s able to push aside those thoughts.
Charlie opens the window before he climbs onto the bed and tries to pull back the comforter. Dev stubbornly holds on tight, but Charlie’s stronger, and he yanks the blanket away from Dev’s face. The sight makes Charlie’s throat close up: unwashed hair, no glasses, curled up in a tight ball.
“Leave,” Dev grunts into his pillow.
“Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to leave.”
Part of him wants to. The more powerful part of him reaches out to push Dev’s hair off his forehead. “Please tell me what you need.”
Dev opens his eyes and looks up at Charlie. They’re the color of his perfect violin and filled with tears, and he’s the most beautiful person Charlie’s ever seen, even now. “I need you to leave. I… I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Charlie thinks about all the times he’s pushed someone away because he didn’t want them to see his anxiety and his obsessiveness, and he thinks about what he really wanted all those times people took him at his word. He climbs back onto the bed and reaches out for Dev. Dev pulls away, fights him off, eventually curls down against his chest, and holds on tight. Dev sinks deep into Charlie, crying into the folds of his oxford shirt. Charlie tries to hold Dev like Dev held him that night in the bathroom, carrying his weight.
Most of the time, Dev is like a human bonfire walking around generously warming everyone with his presence. But burning that bright and that fiercely must be exhausting; no one can sustain it forever. Charlie wishes he could tell Dev it’s okay to flicker out sometimes. It’s okay to tend to his own flame, to keep himself warm. He doesn’t have to be everything for everyone else all the time.
Charlie wishes he could cup his hands around the feeble Dev flame, blow on its embers to keep him going before he burns himself out completely.
“Do you get like this a lot?”
A few quiet sobs dislodge from Dev’s throat. “I get like this sometimes, yeah,” he whispers. “Little funks. But I bounce back. I’ll bounce right back.”
“How can I help when it gets like this?”
Dev folds himself tighter against Charlie, all those lovely sharp points digging in. “You can just stay,” he says, at last. “No one ever stays.”
As Dev falls asleep on his chest, Charlie understands so clearly that Dev has spent four weeks trying to convince Charlie he deserves something Dev doesn’t believe he himself deserves. That whatever these little funks are—these evenings of the brain—they’ve convinced Dev he doesn’t deserve someone who stays. Charlie wishes he could find the words, find a way, to show Dev what he’s worth, even if this thing between them is already over. Even if it was only ever practice.
But Charlie doesn’t know how you show someone they’re worthy of being loved. So he just stays.