“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.