I think I have a better idea of what I was struggling with in this chapter. I was trying to determine just how much Colson would "let go" and what circumstances would facilitate that letting go, and how that would manifest itself. It is easy to write about an unchanging character with predictable behavior, and I had some of the same dilemmas in previous situations where Colson would go back and forth about his commitment to Ellery and grappling with being "outed" sometimes a little and sometimes all at once. One of the guidelines I use for this is the transformation scene from BBM in which Ennis drives up to Lightning Flat and admits to Jack's parents that he was very close to him, effectively outing himself to people who were very close to Jack.
I took that as a sort of guideline that there are situations in which my character would take sudden huge leaps regardless of how much it exposed him because he was in for all or nothing, and would even overcome his own paranoia about his sexuality given the right circumstances. This is his first real complete separation from "homelike" surroundings after establishing himself in Tourmaline (the trip up north notwithstanding) and so this is the time, if it is ever going to happen, for him to make whatever further strides he is going to make into coming out of the closet.
But it is not easy writing to do.
