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

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

dammit woman, you can't tease us with a description like that and not share!

I can. I totally, totally can. Because I am evil.

*dons YAY EVIL t-shirt*

also, hi, i don't know if i've ever commented before.

Hi! Nice to meet you. May I taunt you with further descriptions of They Are So Straight, Seriously, This Is How All Straight Guys Act stories?

[selfinduced.livejournal.com]

but, but!! ...agh! yes, yes, okay. you can.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*beams*

Then I will tell you more tales of the Gen That Is Not Gen!

The story I described above - well, I hadn't finished reading it when I wrote the post. I just thought it couldn't get any more slashy without actual blowjobs. Not so! The two male characters shower together, one of them washing the other. In, of course, a totally non-sexual way. THEY ARE JUST GOOD FRIENDS. WHO WASH EACH OTHER. AND SLEEP NAKED TOGETHER.

And I just finished ones in which they, through the magic of a plot device, gave each other orgasmic-like pleasure, repeatedly, by choice, in a totally non-sexual way. Seriously. I read it and said aloud, "Writer person, if two men are deliberately giving each other pleasure like sexual ecstasy only better, YOU ARE WRITING SLASH. I don't care what excuses you've come up with that allow you to pretend that it's gen. Trust me: SLASH."

And, of course, there's the one percysowner told me about from The Sentinel fandom, where Blair has to touch every square inch of Jim's body (while they're both naked, natch), and they get all sweaty and sticky, and they have to get towels to clean up afterward, and then Jim lies there cuddling with Blair and thinking about how weird it is that anyone might think this is a sexual relationship.

It is amazing how many writers out there wanted to write a story with all the trappings of a sexual and romantic relationship but without any suggestion of, you know, actual homosexuality.