DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

I managed to miss that implication; I didn't read that as incest at all, just as him being used to sleeping next to George, which we had previously been told they did when traveling. Also if they slept in connecting rooms with the door open, saying Goodnight would be common enough. I shared a room with my sister for 1.5 years and still share a house, and we grab each other first to share anything we want to squee about or need an opinion on, but we've never had sex. Some people are just really close. Codependency would be a survival skill after the Rising.

Of course, if Seanan says they're fucking like bunnies, well, she'd know, right? =)

I too managed to read Deadline and not actually realise that implication until I read it in this thread, just thought he was sleepy enough that the female who was saying goodnight to him in his room was George. Pretty oblivious hey?

Oh good, there's more of us who didn't get that implication either. Yes, I took it as "goodnight $personToWhomIsayGoodnight". But then Shaun strikes me as being at least as Aspie as I am (coupled with less enculturation than I got).

Oh good. I feel less like an idiot.

I had glimmerings of the idea when they, in FEED, insisted on the hotel room together and pushed the beds off to one side (together) so they could set up computer equipment.

Also, when Shaun referred to George as "my Georgia" once, near the beginning of DEADLINE, I figured it out, and my heart broke for him even more.

Other glimmerings in FEED:
Shaun's blog post near the beginning about how he's got one person that he's living for.
At the Rymans' ranch, when Georgia's enjoying watching Shaun move.

There were other things in how they interacted, but they didn't stand out on first reading like those did. Then in DEADLINE, there's plenty of glimmers when Becks jumps Shaun that he's had sex before. George had explicitly stated in FEED that he didn't date. So either George had lied, or George didn't know Shaun as well as she thought, or he was having sex with someone he didn't have to "date".

You're not alone in that....I mean, George has been having conversations with Shaun in his head for over a year now, they probably talk a lot just as he's drifting off to sleep.

As opposed to Shaun drifting off to sleep next to someone else, which for all I can tell was happening for the very first time in his life.

Awful faux pas, but it didn't indicate sex-with-George to me at all.

Sometimes I think I may be one of the few people left who actually thinks of a deep kind of intimacy-based platonic love for others that isn't based on sex. I get startled when people talk about how famous same-sex friends in fiction (Holmes and Watson, Robin Hood and Little John, Spencer and Hawk) were probably friggling like bunnies. That stuff never occurs to me. Not with opposite sex friends either unless sexual tension is written into the story.