Chapter Text
The root of the problem was that Amos knew his sexuality was fundamentally fucked. He literally looked at everyone and immediately evaluated their threat status – physical, intellectual, sexual, situational, whatever. If Whoever made it past that initial assessment, then Amos was generally indifferent, up until that individual proved themselves further (or not). Attraction only floated into the picture when Whoever showed enough appealing qualities to actually attract Amos’ attention. Naomi and Jim featured on this short list.
But Amos didn’t need real attraction to have sex. In fact, he generally preferred the clear-cut rules of a transactional exchange over anything more complicated. He chose his partners/prostitutes based not on attraction, but a plethora of other reasons. He wanted someone who wouldn’t try to push the exchange for more than agreed, someone who could physically handle his bulk, someone who wouldn’t hate him for being an Earther, and someone who genuinely needed the scrip. They were always women, even when they were at their most masculine and domineering (and fucking Belter tall).
Straddling the jagged line between denial and obliviousness, it took Amos almost ten years post-Gravity Well to confront this pattern in his proclivities. He hadn't thought he had "proclivities", weren't they already trained out of him? A childhood of exposure to and participation in all sorts of sexual exploitation had left him with a shattered slate of expectation when it came to potential partners. Getting off was getting off, and any two (+) people, of whatever persuasion, can get each other off with a little imagination and elbow grease. This Truth, which Amos would proclaim loudly and widely if prompted, made it hard for Amos to recognize that his actions did not meet his understanding of himself; made it impossible for him to accept the sexual self-sabotaging.
The occasional nightmare suggested the source of Amos’ problem. Amos wanted to deny it, but the truth was too obvious to ignore forever. Amos had some residual fear of Men, sexually, and that was not fucking okay. Amos enjoyed sex, however influenced by his childhood, and it galled him to think that he was any way “traumatized” by his experiences. If there was some hot cock to be had, Amos shouldn’t be passing it up for some lame PTSD. And as everyone knows, the only sensable solution to PTSD is to fly straight at it at a good 10g. Amos always liked the Earther expression, common on the streets of Baltimore: Like a bat out of Hell. And so categorized Amos’ ground assault on his sexuality.