Page 30 of The Charm Offensive
He sets down his bourbon on the counter in front of Charlie and grabs his laptop off the coffee table. “If you do hate it, just… don’t tell me.”
Dev comes back to the counter and stands so close, Charlie gets a noseful of his deodorant, Tide laundry detergent, and something else, something smoky and sweet. Charlie inhales and tries to place the scent before he realizes… it’s just Dev’s skin. Then he realizes he’s smelling Dev and should probably stop. He takes a gulp of bourbon.
“What’s your email address?” Dev asks. Charlie reaches across Dev to type it in for him and presses send before Dev can change his mind. Charlie’s phone buzzes in his pocket ten seconds later. He pulls it out.
“No, don’t read it now! Don’t read it in front of me!” Dev lunges dramatically to shove Charlie’s phone aside. Dev’s hand brushes Charlie’s hand, then his thighs brush Charlie’s knees on the stool, then they’re touching in so many places, Charlie doesn’t know what to do. Dev stands in between Charlie’s open legs, hovering over him. Dark brown eyes and body heat and that distinctly Dev smell.
Something churns in Charlie’s lower stomach—panic, probably, from the closeness. From the touching. He doesn’t like touching, and he definitely doesn’t like the feeling of Dev’s entire body pressing against his. Charlie’s skin is on fire.
Dev finally pulls away. “Sorry,” he mumbles, eyes on his bourbon as he takes an unsteady sip, spilling some down the front of his white shirt. In an instant, Charlie’s brain does an impressive one-eighty, no longer able to panic about the touching, now fully panicking aboutthe stain.
There’s a giant stain down the front of Dev’s shirt. Charlie’s fingers itch to soak it before it fully sets. Dev starts talking again, but Charlie can’t make out the words. A thick, buzzing sound has filled his ears, and his eyes are unable to look at anything—think about anything—but the stain on Dev’s white shirt.
(This is definitely about the stain and only the stain, and not about what happened before the stain, when Dev stood between his legs, and Charlie’s entire body ignited.)
He knows the stain isn’t literally getting bigger, but it feels like it is. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and Charlie’s skin is getting tighter and tighter. He tries to revert to a coping strategy, count to thirty in German, but the spiral is too strong, and he is unable to latch onto any thought butstain.
Stain stainstain.
If he doesn’t do something about itright now, he’ll peel off his own skin.
Without thinking, he reaches out for the bottom of Dev’s white T-shirt and pulls. “Take off your shirt!”
Dev
Charlie’s fist is knotted in the fabric of his shirt. Dev takes another large step backward until it’s not. “Excuse me?”
Dev knows, professionally speaking, getting drunk alone with Charlie Winshaw is maybe not the smartest thing he’s ever done, but it felt so good to finally open up to someone about everything with Ryan—to have someonelisten, to have someone give him permission to let go of the Fun Dev mask a tiny bit. Just for a minute.
In his defense, he could not have predicted Charlie would start demanding he remove articles of clothing.
Charlie springs off the stool. “You need to take your shirt off so we can soak the stain.” He rushes into the small kitchen, flings open cupboards, pulling things down violently. “Why is there no white vinegar in this house?”
“Well, it’s a fake house.…”
“Dish soap will have to work.”
It isn’t until Charlie has filled a bowl with warm water and Dawn dish soap that Dev realizes what’s going on. “It’s just a shirt, Charlie. They come in Costco three-packs. Don’t stress about it.”
“I can’t just not stress about it!” Charlie’s fists slam onto the countertop. “My mind doesn’t work that way!”
Andoh.
Until this exact moment, Dev assumed Charlie’s social awkwardness was the product of generalized anxiety and too many Friday nights spent in front of a computer screen instead of out in the world with other humans. It hadn’t occurred to him it could be something else.
Briefly, viciously, Ryan’s “head case” creeps back into his mind. But then he’s thinking about Charlie’s constant fear of saying the wrong thing, and Charlie’s fear of letting other people get close, and Dev wonders if maybe there isn’t something very specific Charlie Winshaw doesn’t want other people to see.
The anger fades from Charlie’s posture as quickly as it appeared, and Dev crosses the kitchen and puts a cautious hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Okay,” he says quietly. “We’ll soak the shirt.”
Dev pulls the T-shirt up over his head, and Charlie’s eyes travel the distance between his clavicle and his hipbones before they fix themselves back on the bowl of soapy water. “Um, we should soak it for fifteen minutes.” Charlie sets the timer on his phone. “And then put it in the wash.”
“Okay,” Dev says again. He knows the signs of Charlie’s anxiety now—the way his shoulders rise up to his ears, the way his eyebrows compress together, his mouth a painful grimace, his eyes hazy. Dev starts tapping a pattern over and over again with two fingers onto Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie watches Dev’s fingers. “How do you…?” He seizes an awkward breath. “It’s Morse code. For ‘calm.’?”
“Is it? Huh.” Dev keeps drumming the pattern. His voice is low, quiet.Calm. He’s not sure where thecalmis coming from, but calm is what Charlie needs, so Dev pulls it up from some secret wellspring he didn’t know he had. “I’ve seen you do this on set when you’re anxious. When it gets like this, how can I help?”
Charlie swallows. “No one has ever asked me that before.” He looks back at Dev, and his eyes linger this time. They’re close enough for Dev to smell his oatmeal body wash and feel the way Charlie tenses, tightens a bit beneath Dev’s fingers. Dev is always so careful to not look at Charlie fully, but Charlie’s right here, in freckle-counting range, letting Dev help him through this, and Dev is overwhelmed by how desperately he wants to help.
