I like the Oreo analogy above - I'm not only happily desensitized to the smut; if the cream in the Oreo isn't there, I'm not eating the dry cookie part! I want it all, damn it! If properly used, sex is the ultimate writer's tool. It enhances everything. It can be used so many different ways - for tension, for angst, for resolution, for crime, even. I love it. :)

Funny that you should have just posted, when I'm in the thralls of re-reading ATBT in completion again (i.e., rather than just my favourite scenes!). I love it. I love being lost in it. So glad you wrote it, and that's it's just there, whenever I need to read it. :)