ahhh yay :) thank you fey! ok i'm putting this under a cut because it's pretty long. It starts right after Ouyang lays the bait for Esen to distrust Baoxiang and ends right before sex starts happening.

hello anon <3

1) What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year? - stay close to me. It was such a difficult fic to write but I am very happy with the 'turn' of the fic, which is where the title comes from.

6) What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? ugh my fav pieces of dialogue are in wips!!! For published fic I really like when Chris tells Eduardo "I like seeing the world through your eyes" in the ones who soar because it felt very honest. Love is special because the more you get to know someone the more they show you their perspective! It can be such a gift.

8) Which fic this year was most fun to write? i will guide you in the night was so fun!!!! I really love talking about light as a motif, I loved watching rally cross videos to make Sam's dream realistic, and I liked being able to write a character with chronic pain. I love writing people's relationships with their bodies. To be able to go through all of the medical minutae of Sam's situation, which I care deeply about but I never see in anything I read, was really fun as well and then to write bed sharing, my fav trope?! 10/10. The hardest part of that fic was figuring out transitions and how to end it. I did have to have my partner be my stick shift beta and that was also pretty fun, it felt very collaborative hahaha :)

thanks for asking!

Ahhh thank you for these great questions, because stay close to me actually arose out of me unable to figure out how to make the Esen pov fix it (a longing that's killing me) work. I find Esen so hard to write because he is such an asshole lmao, and I also find mirroring SPC's prose super difficult because our prose styles are opposites.

The Esen Fix It was basically me trying to fix the almost kiss. It starts off after the almost kiss and basically is about Esen realizing he's been a huge dick and trying to be better/less offensive so he can be with Ouyang while also trying to figure out how it's physically possible to be with Ouyang...but I was concerned it was very OOC. Esen never apologizes in the book, even when he knows he's very wrong, and the way I had Esen justify his own behavior to himself felt weak. I have almost 7k of this fic but due to my concerns about characterization I abandoned it. It's unfortunate, the dramatic irony was delicious. I would love to figure out how to finish it :( Later I started what would become stay close to me from Esen's pov but ran into the same problems.

For stay close to me's inspiration, 1) I love horses 2) I think what makes Ouyang such a complex character is not just the gender stuff but also his identity as a disabled person, and I wanted to explore his relationship with his body 3) I think the opening scene in stay close to me is the part of the novel where Ouyang would be most compelled to turn back or deviate from the path he must walk, and the perfect opportunity for Esen to realize Ouyang is actually not happy. 4) when I was rereading I was struck by Esen's dialogue...almost every time he talks to Ouyang he's hinting at having feelings for Ouyang, it's insane. I can't decide if Ouyang subconsciously knows this and is not acknowledging it because of his duty to his family or if he seriously missed Esen's blatant flirting attempts. Like the first time we meet Esen he's literally staring at Ouyang and playing with his hair. Give me a break! The text supports both theories, unfortunately.

But not all is lost, as I am cribbing my fav elements from this fix it and adding them to my ouyang pov fix it, which has turned into a monster :(

I've added a snippet of the Esen pov fix it below the read more for funsies.