Their bare hands, exchanging the reins, brushed.
It was only ever Esen who thought Ouyang deserving of reward. Who refused to see what everyone else saw.
Ouyang could no more be jealous of Esen than he could be of the sun.
“All those years of yearning, and you finally get Esen kneeling for you. Did it feel good?”
Ouyang was so much a fixture in his life that he seemed devoid of any past other than the one he shared with Esen.
“But the thought of being apart from you for so long seems strange to me."
It was the first time he had ever lied to Esen.
But for all that Ouyang was a general of the Yuan, he didn’t fight for the empire. His efforts had only ever been for Esen.
Esen’s grief and anger were unbearable: they gave Ouyang a gnawing pain that was like having sharkskin rubbed over every tender place of his body.
"But you, you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”
In that respect, killing Chaghan hadn’t been a sin. But breaking Esen felt like one.
Ouyang’s heart ached. Why can’t you make it easier for me to hate you?
“This is your death. That is mine. We’re fixed, Esen.” The saltiness was choking him. “We always have been.”
His mouth never moved much when he smiled, but tiny crescents appeared on either side.
For some reason Ouyang always noticed them.
Why don’t you ever need anything? I would give it to you.
For a moment he had a sense-flash of Esen—not one particular memory, but something stitched together from every moment they had spent together: the feel of his body, his particular smell, his presence. It was intimate and completely false, and it was all Ouyang would ever have.
Choose me, he thought, his eyes fixed on Esen’s face, and felt sick.
When he finally tore his eyes away from Esen, it felt like ripping out a piece of himself.
-A study of comradeship and homoeroticism in She Who Became the Sun (by Shelley Parker-Chan)
this is what I needed to satisfy my obsession, but then my mind say, oh well. we want more.