I agree that the "Everything" really makes it look like they (we:-) get a happy ending. But your invocation of hippy love sage or pages of romantically perfect love scenes kind of establishes a spectrum that's already predicated on the fact that we *are* reading a romance, that John and Rodney *are* together. [Or, said differently, I don't think my desire to actually *see* the love in the text requires purply prose as a result. i think we have enough writers in fandom who heavily uderwrite just like Helen and yet bring across the true love and all...]

I guess I'm still not convinced that the story read outside of a slash context, outside of our expectations, is convincing as a love story. And then the next question, of course, is whether that's even relevant! Because we *are* reading it in contect, and, like you, I totally melted at the everything, b/c it seemed the happy ending in spite of...the fitting together almost against their own awareness?