Band Sinister one hundred percent read like fic to me, with the low-emotional-stakes and the everyone-is-surprisingly-good-at-overcoming-their-lifelong-instincts-for-this-gay-relationship-to-happen of much fanfic. But that's the only Charles I have read! So I have nothing to compare it to. (I read it on an airplane, they do make very good airplane reading even if I keep tipping my ereader screen away from my seat neighbors when the sex scenes happen.) I should look into some of these others.