Throwing a pillow through your TV would've been seriously impressive. Just sayin'.

ai no kusabi

god don't even shut up rn

plays into the roots of that trope

It's kind of a general refusal of the narrative to fully buy into and deliver the romance element, and I think it's probably ignorant to say that the fact that it's homoromance didn't influence that decision. (I mean you have tragic separation with het couples all the time but het couples also do not have an entire pantheon of tropes designed to negotiate their sexuality out of the text...)