open post: pollen science

[peaklordshen]

After his conversation with Sagramore, Shen Qingqiu had taken a long, hot shower, mainly for the novelty of it, and then gotten dressed again in his robes—although he wore fewer layers than were truly proper for a peak lord, and he'd forgone his guan in favor of just braiding his hair in a thick coil against his neck. He leaves the two looser loops at the front—he still can't find his fan, and it felt wrong to not have any frame to his face at all. He's not thinking about why he feels loath to fully don his Shen Qingqiu persona. He's not thinking about much, about the last few days. Instead, he's thinking about pollen.

He's in the greenhouse, carefully laying out a sample cut from every plant in the place, as well as every plant he can imagine producing pollen of any kind from the grounds. Grasses, flowers, buds, leaves, even a few species of harmless-looking mushroom. He's using a pair of tweezers he found to gentle separate them so he can examine the internal structures. Some he recognizes as entirely harmless - Earth flora; others are stranger, more alien. Some even look similar to plants from Proud Immortal Demon Way, though thankfully none are obviously aphrodisiac in nature. Shen Qingqiu is wearing his gloves and mask again anyway—he doesn't want to breathe in the wrong pollen; normal sex pollen would just increase his normal desires and make him hyper-straight, totally defeating the purpose.

He has his notebook open to a fresh page, and is making meticulous lists.

Comments

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu flushes and brushes his samples aside with cultivation behind his back, covering his notebook page with a flick of his sleeve. "Don't--don't worry about it," he says. "Studying plants."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu presses his lips together into a thin line, just for a moment, before he's back to smiling. "Well," he says. "Would you like to make another? Just for fun, this time."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," quickly. "We should choose the flowers together this time."

[summerdude]

"Oh cool," Magnus says. "I'm pretty good at plants, actually." Well. Growing them with fits of alf seidr, at least. "What are you trying to figure out?"

[peaklordshen]

"Alright," says Shen Qingqiu. He should really go back to his BL pollen hunt, but--he can take the time. "Let's see. If it's just for fun, how about--" he flips through the book. "Wood sorrel?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods, and, taking his turn at the book, "Acacia."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu nods, and writes it down in his notebook. "Hawthorne."

[onthewillowsthere]

With a flare of delight, "I was going to say hawthorne--" before he flushes and glances down.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu laughs, charmed by Galahad's bashfulness. "Then we'll put twice as much," he says. "Pick again."

[onthewillowsthere]

"The garden sage, then," reassured.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu is glad Galahad has taken to this so well, and pleased at his occasional, daybreak smiles, even if they don't quite last, but he can't quite forget the blank devastation on his face when he'd first arrived to the greenhouse, or the desperate longing showing through in his first flower choices. "Swallow-wort," he suggests, gently, eyes on Galahad's face.

[onthewillowsthere]

The playfulness evaporates as he drops his own gaze to the page, and his expression turns empty again, almost as if his face is incapable of rendering whatever emotion he feels and settles for nothing at all as a compromise. It's perhaps easy to see how this could have failed to win him friends, when his depth of feeling presents as stone-faced indifference.

He nods quietly.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu takes his hand, giving it a squeeze. "Ox-eye," he says, "and black poplar, I think. Will you help me find them?"

[onthewillowsthere]

It's easier to talk this way, in this language of flowers, than to try and state his turmoil of feelings outright, and he's grateful to Shen Qingqiu for providing the translation. He nods.

[peaklordshen]

"Alright," says Shen Qingqiu. "I think a lot of these are sort of, herb-y... let's start with the sage." He leads Galahad around the gardens, puttering through flowerbeds and piling Galahad's arms high with his finds.

He laughs, at one point, seeing him bedecked with little white and yellow blossoms like stars. "They suit you," he says. "Maybe these we should weave into a crown of willows for your golden head."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu - cannot possibly tell a teenage boy about the pollen he hopes will make him gay enough to sleep with Luo Binghe in a truly gay way. Especially this teenage boy, with his ambiguously transgender girlfriend. What if Magnus thinks he's being homophobic, like Janet??

But—he thinks about his conversation with Tress—maybe he can put Magnus' knowledge to different use. "I'm trying to figure out whether they're native to... wherever here is, or if they've been conjured by request like the food in the kitchens from various worlds. Some of them I recognize, but..." he shakes his head. "That could just mean—co-evolution, somehow, or that whatever this pocket dimension is it split off from a world more familiar to me."

[onthewillowsthere]

It makes him think of the crown of stars from his dream, and his breath catches softly. He remembers himself as Damien, then, with the crown of rosemary and columbine, with the oleander in his hair, and Claudius touching him to take it (he wonders whether Claudius still has the oleander). "...Perhaps. Willow is for mourning."

[peaklordshen]

"Some willow," says Shen Qingqiu, consulting the book. "Other willow can be for bravery, and humanity." He can't make that choice for Galahad, though—which willow, no willow at all, crown or no crown. It's only the second thing he ever made! It should be his!

He returns to their leaf-and-petal strewn workbench, and gestures for Galahad to arrange as he sees fit.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu blinks, impressed. He hadn't even thought about charting the stars. "Is the sky very different from yours?" he asks. "I suppose it must be—no big spore moons."

[peaklordshen]

"Young master Laertes," he says, with a smile, even though he should be annoyed. Everyone is coming to distract him from his very important research!! His very important, completely fruitless research. "Would that I had—I could simply transform something into what I'm looking for, rather than trying to find it."

[timebethine]

"What are you looking for?" Laertes comes around the rack, leaning over to examine the samples. He recognizes a few that he knows aren't poisonous--yarrow and wild geranium--so he reaches down to pick up a few and study them more closely.

[sporesprouter]

The star charting was entirely Janet's idea but Tress certainly did throw herself into it with a bit more enthusiasm than warranted. "Oh, very. The sky was what made me most uneasy when I got here. Even know, it's still very strange to me."

[onthewillowsthere]

It's like the billiards -- he has no innate talent for this, and with Shen Qingqiu not perfecting his work it's a lot more challenging, but it turns out that feels good. The flowers they've chosen are so delicate. He has to work hard not to crush them as he threads them together. It takes him a moment to work up the ability to ask, "Will you teach me how you do it?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu opens to his mouth to explain, then pauses. That had... gone pretty badly with Janet. Maybe he needs to approach this more cautiously. "We spoke, in the kitchen," he says, "of... the kindness of those here, in regard to the expression of affection, regardless of its target," he says. "I gather your world was less kind?" He doesn't know much about Shakespeare, but he's not shocked to discover his plays are homophobic. That's, just, like, the times.

[timebethine]

"Indeed," says Laertes, letting his tone be mild. There are fears deeper than disappointing his father lurking there. He traces his fingertips down the skin-soft petal of a pansy. "Some are at peace with such sins, an they not be done openly. But in most lands I know, it's death to be a sodomite."