I wanna know what love is; I want you to show me.

[thefourthvine]

Older fandoms, you confuse me so. The story I'm reading right now has piercing gazes, searing gazes, cuddling, comforting, lengthy descriptions of eyes that change color (Green! Hazel! Gold! No, I'm not kidding - really, gold, and this isn't the right fandom for him to have been implanted with a Goa'uld.), marriage proposals, men of action sharing their feelings in astonishing detail and with great (sometimes searing) honesty, a guy telling another guy how beautiful he is, holding hands, kissing, and two adult men (of action!) with extensive disposable incomes living together and sharing a bed.

And it's gen.*

I am patiently waiting for the mutual declarations of eternal love while hugging (or crying; I'd totally take crying) in the rain. Then, and only then, will I be able to stop reading.

So, does anyone have a story from an older fandom to recommend to me? You people have mostly been at this longer than me - surely you've got some nice gen or slash story favorite from a pre-LJ fandom that you could link me to. Gen or slash welcome - especially gen that I can read as gen. Seriously. Save me from myself. And this story. I am just bewildered, here.

-Footnote-

* Another gen story in the same fandom (but by a different person) features a noted canonical horndog turning down NSA sex with a beautiful woman because he's in love with someone else - that someone being, of course, the guy who is his Entirely Not Slashy Totally Hetero Life Partner. (It also had a paragraph about their great and abiding love, and the Totally Hetero Life Partner isn't even in the story. Nor is there any explanation of why the THLP would want his "friend" to turn down the sex - I mean, seriously, it was just presented as "this is what you do when you're in love with your THLP, forswear sex and cleave only unto him, but in a straight and manly way." I guess I am just not straight enough to understand that.) And the author's note contained a diatribe against slash. Oh, my people.

Comments

[elishavah.livejournal.com]

Um, yeah. Honestly, Due South is far back as I've ever discovered I'm comfortable reading. And even there, there comes a point when I'm making boggled anime eyes at the screen and I must stop.

'Twas a different time, which was so not my time.

Also, sign #427 that I've been around government longer than fandom: "NSA sex" meant something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT until I forced it to make a non-terrifying kind of sense.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

'Twas a different time, which was so not my time.

Really. Totally. I mean, a lot of this stuff I'd consider OOT in a slash story, never mind a supposedly gen one. (I am especially not keen on these guys engaging in heartfelt discussions of their feelings and trauma and angst and secrets and... I mean, seriously, I think they'd rather shoot themselves - or each other - than do that.)

Also, sign #427 that I've been around government longer than fandom: "NSA sex" meant something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT until I forced it to make a non-terrifying kind of sense.

NSA sex! It's, um, very cryptic sex!

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

NSA sex! It's, um, very cryptic sex!

And someone is probably recording it.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Hah. My thoughts exactly when I saw "NSA". I still don't know what it means in this context.

[ifreet.livejournal.com]

No strings attached.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

My thought process: NSA sex? Sex with someone who works for the National Security Agency? Sex that's *monitored* by the NSA? Is there a kinky side to the NSA that I *am not aware of*?!?!

[qe2.livejournal.com]

Is there a kinky side to the NSA

Seems rather likely to moi :-).

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

You haven't lived until you've gotten a phone sex call from a lover doing a professional development session at Langley, which is prefaced by the sentence, "I'm not really allowed to call anyone from here, but I'm pretty sure I've hacked a way out so that the call can't be traced."

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

This sounds like the perfect first line to a great number of fics in a number of fandoms.

Plus, yanno, awesome in real life.