The Charm Offensive

by Alison Cochrun

Most of the time, he feels eternally grateful that his lapse in judgment was kindly expunged by a benevolent universe and multiple tequila shots.

Charlie wants to eat that sound, pour it like sugar over fresh strawberries.

Charlie doesn’t want that either. He didn’t come on this show for the stupid fairy tales it sells to gullible people. He doesn’t want a relationship or romance. He doesn’t want someone who kisses him numb and calls him love. He doesn’t.

“Don’t stand there and tell me Ever After’s perpetuation of internalized misogyny is unintentional, Aiden! If I were running this show, I would— Oh, hey, babe.”

“Quite frankly, you kissing your producer is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened on this heteronormative cesspool of a shitty television show.”

“labels can be nice sometimes. They can give us a language to understand ourselves and our hearts better. And they can help us find a community and develop a sense of belonging.

you’re allowed to have whatever feelings you have toward Dev, even if they don’t fit into some fairy-tale idea of what relationships are supposed to be. You’re allowed to want the romance parts without the sex parts. Or the sex parts without the romance parts. All of those feelings are valid. You’re deserving of a relationship in whatever form you want it.”

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.

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.

Dev told her it was like drowning from the inside. Like his brain was filling with water. Like sitting on the bottom of the deep end of the west Raleigh public pool the way he would as a kid, letting the silence and the pressure crush him until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Kissing Charlie—and coming to terms with the fact that he needs to stop kissing Charlie—shouldn’t have been enough to trigger his depression, but unfortunately, that’s not how his depression works. It’s not logical or reasonable. It doesn’t need some catastrophic tragedy to turn the chemicals of his brain against him. Tiny tragedies are more than enough.

There are so many people who have done actual terrible things who are actively working in tech! Mark Zuckerberg exists!

“Oh, love,” Dev says, leaning in to kiss the cluster of freckles to the left of his nose. “I already see you.”

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.

“You know what, Dev,” he says, and he fails in his chief mission of not crying in front of him. “For someone who claims to love love, you’re really good at pushing it away.”

“You’re one of the funniest, smartest, kindest, most passionate motherfuckers I’ve ever met, Dev. And you deserve a happily ever after, too.”

Daphne and Charlie are endgame, and Dev was a brief side plot that would probably be cut from the film adaptation of Charlie’s life.

And he loves the way Charlie blushes whenever he touches him (or looks at him, or says words in his general direction).

“Jules…” He swallows through the pressure in his throat, because not saying it seems so much worse than saying it at this point. “I’m in love with him.” Jules snorts. “No shit, dumbass.”

“Have you considered just letting yourself love him?”

“No, Dev.” Charlie laughs. “That was just for the show. Daphne and I spent the night doing Korean face masks and watching You’ve Got Mail.”

Daphne: Because it didn’t feel right. Because it never, ever feels right. [Stay on the wide shot as the other three women comfort Daphne while she cries.] Maureen’s notes to the editor: Why the fuck would we include this scene? Cut the whole thing and expand on the Megan/Delilah fight instead.

TERRIBLE. 1/10 MAUREEN

“Tell me you love me back, Charlie,” she demands, punching his arm. “I love you, Parisa.” “Bitch, I know.” She smirks.

love u parisa

“You are the most beautiful man in the world.” “I’m really not.” “You are,” Charlie says, brushing kisses along his cheekbones. “You’re so good at seeing other people. I wish you could see yourself.”

“What the fuck is this?” Ryan shouts at everyone and no one as he comes stomping onto set. “Didn’t you dickweeds read his file? Why are we doing a massage Quest? Charlie doesn’t like to be touched!”

Look at you ryan bejng respectful

“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.”

speak charlie

“My sexuality wasn’t much of a mystery to my parents. When I was five, I told my mom I wanted to marry Aladdin, and my parents just gave me space to be exactly who I was without making a big deal out of it.”

marrying aladdin is so real

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

Of course, Josh Han is dressed like every Silicon Valley tech bro Dev has ever met when they get to the restaurant twenty minutes later. He’s wearing hiking sandals and a Patagonia vest over his moisture-wicking shirt.

the patagonia i cannot

“And he doesn’t have ‘little quirks,’ and there is no part of his personality he needs to learn to control to appease you. Charlie is compassionate and brilliant and funny and sexy as hell”—that last detail, perhaps, could have been omitted, but he plows onward—“and quite frankly, if you can’t accept him as he is, then you don’t deserve him. And that’s your fucking loss.”