"Well, I'm sorry," says Shen Qingqiu, focusing on the former half of that thought because it's less confusing. "There's been a lot going on the last few days and it's not like I can just choose to think quieter—" He stops. That isn't, actually, strictly true.
He closes his eyes and lets himself fall into the circular breathing that this body knows so well, years of the previous Shen Qingqiu's rigorous meditation and concentration making it second nature to him. When he'd first arrived in PIDW, he'd kind of only pretended to meditate, reciting bits of half-remembered movies in his head or meticulously planning out the exact ways he wished he could verbally eviscerate Airplane for whatever stupid bullshit wifeplot had happened to him that day. But after he'd been poisoned, it kind of started to matter, and also Liu-shidi started meditating with him, and as Bai Zhan War God he was obviously powerful enough he could sense if Shen Qingqiu wasn't circulating his qi properly. So he'd started doing it properly, and honestly, it did help. Not to clear his mind—a concept which was, and always would be, bullshit—but at least to watch the thoughts as they went by and not let them pile all over each other in overwhelming torrents. It's the difference between pulled under by a pack of crocodiles and waiting by the edge of the river to see one surface, at a safe-ish distance.
The crocodile thought that surfaces now is that he's scared—scared Lan Wangji will find and exorcise him before he has a chance to tell Binghe what he thinks of this stupid vampire book, scared he'll be yanked back to his own, original world when all this ends, leaving behind his friends in Proud Immortal Demon Way and his newfound friends here, scared of what he'll find when he does—himself, buried and mourned; his family moved on to the point where his re-entry into their life would cause more harm than good. He might prefer the void of exorcism over that.
But he can't say any of that aloud—better the confusing thing Nina said. He hopes he's succeeded in being less loud to her, at least. "Sagramore said something similar," he says. "Though he stressed his discretion, with—with men. Is there no stigma, then, in Ravka? For affairs between women?" It's hard for him to imagine, a world where being gay doesn't come with any association of weakness or shame.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2023-10-18 04:30 pm (UTC)He closes his eyes and lets himself fall into the circular breathing that this body knows so well, years of the previous Shen Qingqiu's rigorous meditation and concentration making it second nature to him. When he'd first arrived in PIDW, he'd kind of only pretended to meditate, reciting bits of half-remembered movies in his head or meticulously planning out the exact ways he wished he could verbally eviscerate Airplane for whatever stupid bullshit wifeplot had happened to him that day. But after he'd been poisoned, it kind of started to matter, and also Liu-shidi started meditating with him, and as Bai Zhan War God he was obviously powerful enough he could sense if Shen Qingqiu wasn't circulating his qi properly. So he'd started doing it properly, and honestly, it did help. Not to clear his mind—a concept which was, and always would be, bullshit—but at least to watch the thoughts as they went by and not let them pile all over each other in overwhelming torrents. It's the difference between pulled under by a pack of crocodiles and waiting by the edge of the river to see one surface, at a safe-ish distance.
The crocodile thought that surfaces now is that he's scared—scared Lan Wangji will find and exorcise him before he has a chance to tell Binghe what he thinks of this stupid vampire book, scared he'll be yanked back to his own, original world when all this ends, leaving behind his friends in Proud Immortal Demon Way and his newfound friends here, scared of what he'll find when he does—himself, buried and mourned; his family moved on to the point where his re-entry into their life would cause more harm than good. He might prefer the void of exorcism over that.
But he can't say any of that aloud—better the confusing thing Nina said. He hopes he's succeeded in being less loud to her, at least. "Sagramore said something similar," he says. "Though he stressed his discretion, with—with men. Is there no stigma, then, in Ravka? For affairs between women?" It's hard for him to imagine, a world where being gay doesn't come with any association of weakness or shame.