While readers are going to read what they will into stories, I don't subscribe to the school that says whatever a reader thinks is legit. Crazy readers impose crazy readings and ignorant readers impose ignorant ones. But I also don't think the author's intention is paramount--though I do think it should not be ignored. I guess I think reading subtext is detective work, and you have to be careful that you're not making up clues.

For me, the gay relationship in the Wizard books was so obvious that I remembered it as explicit, I didn't read a gay subtext in the Aubrey/Maturin books (I would've expected a bit of recognition from one or both of them during the scenes where homosexuality comes up), but Holmes/Watson can seem deliberately self-slashing, especially after Reichenbach Falls, when Doyle seems to have said, "Okay, it's obvious what my readers want, so I'll chuck Watson's marriages and write about the odd couple sharing a flat."