The Charm Offensive

by Alison Cochrun

He can’t help but picture little Dev, also watching Ever After past his bedtime, and all at once, he’s not mad at Dev at all. He’s just sad for him, for the little kid who fell in love with love stories where no one looked like him, no one thought like him, no one loved like him.

“You can accuse me of only wanting Fun Dev, but the truth is, Fun Dev is all you ever let me see. When things got bad, you would shut me out entirely.” “That’s not—” “Dude. Every time I suggested you try therapy again, you bit my head off. Every time I tried to reach out, you retreated further into yourself. It was like you wanted to preserve this idea you thought I had of you. You wouldn’t let me love the real you.”

“Just because I don’t want to uphold the capitalist, heteronormative structures of matrimony and procreation does not mean I didn’t love you. Is that what you really think?

Dev reaches for his wine again, then stops himself. He’s tired of numbing himself with alcohol every time his heart feels too big inside his chest. He doesn’t want to bury all his feelings and he doesn’t want to keep hiding them from everyone in his life. He doesn’t want to push away love. What he really wants is to be as healthy as he says he is.

Whoever they got this season has to be desperate enough to fly twenty hours one direction for ten minutes of publicity, so Dev is sure it will be particularly awful.

Dev shouts, “I’m obsessed with you!” in Leland Barlow’s face. “But like, not in a creepy way.” Leland Barlow looks him up and down and smiles. “You can be obsessed with me in a creepy way.”

All he wants is to reach out for Dev. He always wants to reach out for Dev, no matter how hard Dev pulls away. He wants to reach and reach and keep reaching.

“That was just for the show. Daphne and I spent the night doing Korean face masks and watching You’ve Got Mail

But Charlie needs to know if any of it was real. “It wasn’t practice,” he confesses. “Huh?” “Can we just be honest with each other for five seconds?” Charlie catches the sharp point of Dev’s hip. “It was never practice for me.”

Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out a brown sandwich bag with a sharp crease across the top. “A parting gift.” Charlie peels back the crease to find… “What is wrong with you?” “I included some diagrams, too, just in case,” she says breezily.

“Lady Gaga!” Charlie shouts suddenly as they’re headed back to the villa. He pulls Dev into a restaurant where a trio of young men are singing a pitchy rendition of “Shallow.”

Charlie tastes like peanut sauce, and they kiss and kiss and kiss, until Charlie hooks his hands around the back of Dev’s thighs and hoists him up. Dev scrambles to wrap his legs around Charlie’s waist, and somehow, Charlie holds him there, suspended, like he weighs nothing.

Charlie pulls him into a rough kiss, and when Charlie mutters, “I love the way you taste,” Dev bursts out laughing.

“You’re so good at seeing other people. I wish you could see yourself.”

are all wearing sheer robes over their underwear. Charlie’s robe is decorated with pink frangipani flowers, and it cuts him across the upper thigh. He looks. Well. He looks very gay, and when he first stepped out of the changing room, Dev turned very pale and stopped looking at anything south of Charlie’s chin.

Charlie understands so plainly, so quickly. Dev’s anger has nothing to do with Charlie and his triggers. “Are you okay with this Quest?” “Why wouldn’t I be okay with it?” Dev pushes his glasses up his nose. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re… jealous?” “I am not jealous,” Dev huffs, sounding unmistakably jealous.

“I lied,” Dev hisses five minutes later as Charlie struggles to put on the rest of his clothes in a back room. “I was really jealous.” “Sweetheart, I know.”

“Poor Wayan was still standing right there, holding the massage oil. I’m pretty sure she got an eyeful of my dick.” “Charles, I got an eyeful of your dick,” Skylar clarifies. “Can we all please appreciate the fact that Charlie just said the word dick out loud without hyperventilating?”

Skylar’s drunk face melts into a scowl. “Are you going to choose Daphne? Of course you’re going to choose Daphne. It’s what we’ve been planning all season. It’s going to be such a boring and predictable season.” “If I had it my way, Sky, it would be neither boring nor predictable.”

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?”

“I might be awkward, though,” Charlie warns him. “You better be awkward. The awkwardness is what does it for me, honestly.”

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.

He hasn’t talked to Josh in over a year, not since the midnight emergency vote of no confidence removed him from his own company, and he wasn’t even allowed to pack up his office. Strangers came to his apartment with a moving van carrying his leather chesterfield, his antique chess set, his books.

But right before he gets in the car, she pulls him in close and whispers too quietly for the mics to hear, “It’s not too late to stop playing by their rules.”

“That’s my Chaz.” There is no version of Charlie Winshaw that would willingly consent to a nickname like Chaz, and Dev is pissed about this whole thing before he even sits down.

His thick dark hair is perfectly styled, and he has a gorgeous jaw Dev would like to stroke before he punches it.

“Ha. Ha.” Dev makes those two syllables as cutting as possible. “It’s so humorous when you mock him for not conforming to your hypersexualized notions of masculinity.” “Whoa, dude.” Josh Han holds up two hands.

Josh knows Charlie doesn’t have a job lined up, knows he has effectively prevented his college best friend from working anywhere. Charlie was a liability with investors before, but now that Charlie is about to become one of the most famous men in the country when his season finally starts to air—now that WinHan needs him—Josh is going to act like none of that ever happened.

Maybe it’s the way he dismisses Dev, or maybe it’s the sound of the old, ironic nickname for him, but the clog in Charlie’s throat now feels like certainty. “Sorry, but I have to go.” He rises and nearly upends the table with his knees. “Actually, no, I’m not sorry. I’m just going.”

It’s Josh always laughing at him and Dev always laughing with him. It’s the difference between a twentieth-floor apartment and a house in Venice Beach.

Dev is standing there in his ratty basketball shorts and Charlie’s Stanford T-shirt.

“It’s almost over. Soon you’ll have everything you want.” She stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek.

Ryan clears his throat. “I imagine this is all a lot harder now that you’re fucking the star.” Dev jerks his head. He must have misheard. Misunderstood. “W-what?”

“You flew his best friend to set, and he flew your favorite pop star to South Africa.”

“The show? Dev, I don’t give a shit about the show. I give a shit about you

If Charlie wanted him, he would do just about anything for that little house in Venice Beach, including hiding away there like a gay Rapunzel, waiting for the moments when Charlie could come to him in secret.

Skylar swallows an antacid. “I think you have to decide if you love him enough right now to try for forever.” Charlie chokes. “Him? Her. Daphne. I… I love… Daphne.” Skylar rises from her chair and approaches him again, reaches up to brush the errant curls off his forehead so he’s camera ready. “Son, I know everything that happens on my set.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Maureen snaps at the pair of them. “None of this is about me or what I believe. I’m a Democrat. I support gay rights. I hired all of you,” she says, gesturing to Dev, Skylar, Ryan, and Jules. Dev has never felt more like a prop, like a checked box. Maureen plows on. “But this show hinges on appealing to a wide viewership. I’m giving America what it wants, and it does not want a bisexual princess.”

“And what if I refuse?” Charlie asks, each word clipped. Maureen is still for the length of one shallow breath. “Then I’ll give you a terrible edit and let the entire world see just how crazy you really are.”

“What are we going to do?” Dev’s eyes are glassy. Faraway. “There’s nothing we can do. We all signed contracts. You’ll propose to Daphne and get engaged, and the show will air, and then you’ll finally get everything you want.” “I want you,” Charlie says.

“Do you want kids, Charlie?” It’s the last thing he expected Dev to ask him, and any attempt at an answer gets sealed off inside his dry throat.

“I love you because you try to understand my brain even though you’re terrible at being patient, and because you’re passionate about the stupidest things, and because you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love how you make me laugh. I love your ugly cargo shorts, and I love how cranky you get when you’re hungry, and I love how stubborn you are, and I don’t love you despite those things. I love you because of those things.”

And it’s okay if you don’t love me back yet. I can love enough for both of us. Just please stop pulling away.”

“I love you. How could I not love you?” Charlie grabs his wrists to hold him in place. “Then let me choose you. Choose us. Please.”

Ever After is problematic, and I had to leave to get healthy. And I am healthier.”

“But you’re right, Dev. You don’t need romantic love to be complete or to be happy. If you don’t want those things, then”—Alex waves their hands as if they’re casting a magic spell—“you don’t want them. But I want to make sure you’re giving up on your old romantic ideals because you don’t want them. Not because you think you don’t deserve them.”

When he walks into his parents’ house a little after nine, they’re both sitting on the couch trying too hard to be natural. The fact that they’re both reading books is a dead giveaway, but there is also the bottle of wine on the coffee table, the remote control askew on the arm of the couch, his mother’s flushed look of guilt as proof.

“It was so weird—after I bought it, I kept walking into rooms and feeling this overwhelming sense that something was missing. So I filled every room with furniture, and I let Parisa hang art on every wall, and I bought plants to put in front of every window, and it took me days to realize you were the missing thing. I kept expecting to see you standing by the window, or in the third bedroom at the desk working on your script, or in the kitchen burning pancakes. I guess I really liked the idea of you being in my future, and I haven’t quite figured out how to not have you in it.”

The editing team has simply gone through and expanded the scope of the show just a little to make room for Dev.

“Dev,” Parisa says. “Charlie put it all on the line. He fought for a season of television that tells the truth, and the last thing the world saw was you leaving him in Macon without a word. He had his heart broken.” She sounds so hurt, and he understands it’s because he hurt the person she loves most in the world, and loving someone means carrying around their hurt, too. “But the season isn’t over. There is still the live finale, still a chance for you to make this right.”