Turns in the Road: Future Tense, by cmar, Wes/Eric

[cmar_wingnut]

Title: Future Tense
Author: cmar
Relationship: Wes/Eric
Rating: PG to PG-13, hints of sexual content
Warning: Angst alert!

This is a companion piece to my last entry, 'Bits and Pieces', and takes place immediately after it.

Comments

[cmar_wingnut]

UST = Unresolved Sexual Tension.

if he'd been 100% straight, would the situation in the clock tower have developed like it had?

Well, a couple of thoughts here - first of all, ask 10 people that question and you'll likely get 10 different answers, none of them really wrong or really right, just opinion. Second - no one's absolutely 100% straight (or gay, for that matter), or next to no one. Third - it's really not that unusual for people to experiment, although it's usually when they're teenagers, or to once in a while feel a stong attaction outside their usual preference. Also, there are plenty of straight guys who would let another guy get them off, just for the physical pleasure - sure, they'd prefer a woman, but sex is sex.

There are also a lot of people who would say that our habit of labeling people as gay or straight or bi is incorrect and irrelevant, and that sexuality is fluid and changable. (I personally think that's true of some individuals but not most.)

But - in this case? No, I think if Wes was basically straight he would have stopped Eric - he's just not the kind of person to look on sex as purely physical, and I think he wouldn't have wanted to get himself into that kind of situation with Eric in particular if he didn't return those feelings. Also, although in this series it's not spelled out and I don't expect most readers to pick up on it, in 'Red Fire' there's a slightly more detailed description of the clock tower scene which makes it clear that Wes not only receives but gives back, and that it's better and more exciting to him than anything before, both things he conveniently chooses to ignore in his thoughts about the incident.

So that's why I made that comment. If it was just guy A and guy B having one sexual encounter, it might genuinely not mean anything about their orientation. The meaning is more in Wes's personality and his reactions, his need to explain it to himself and to convince himself that it didn't mean anything, and even to pretend it never happened, that are more revealing than just the plain fact of two guys having sex.