peaklordshen | open post: pollen science

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.

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Shen Qingqiu sighs. "You know how I told you Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are, like, fictional to me? I watched them in a c-drama before I died?"¹

¹ He absolutely did not tell her this. He's rewriting it in his brain because it's less embarrassing than what he did tell her, which is "I'm afraid Lan Wangji is disappointed in me."

"No," Janet says immediately, then frowns. "What? Right, the gay-married ones. You said they're from... your... genre." The last sentence pains her a little, because she really hates to concede any of Shen Qingqiu's unhinged rambling about fiction to him. "You definitely didn't say anything about seeing them on TV, or whatever."

"They're from Proud Immortal Demon Way's genre," Shen Qingqiu corrects. Sort of, depending on how you classify—anyway. "But that's the thing. They're not gay married. Well, they are here, but they weren't in the drama I watched. Which is their world, where they're from, it was just fictional to me." Really, it's all very obvious.

God, just when she thinks maybe Shen Qingqiu is okay company, he gets extra weird again.

"Okay," Janet says, obviously dubious. "So what? Maybe they got married after it ended. Or maybe they just didn't show that part. The Fillory books were a lot cuter and gentler than the real story. Plover left out some shit."

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. "They were straight," he emphasizes. "Like, it wasn't the point of the show, but they had love interests. Lan Wangji had this whole unrequited thing with Mianmian, and Wei Wuxian — well he kind of stole Wen Qing from his martial brother, whatever, it doesn't matter." He gesture at the table in front of him. "I think there's something here making people..." he lowers his voice. "Gayer. Maybe they brought it with them, maybe them being infected with it is what brought them here, I don't know yet."

Edited 2023-10-24 14:47 (UTC)

So, this actually kind of pisses Janet off. She crosses her arms and gives Shen Qingqiu a glacial kind of look. "You sound insane and not in the funny way you sometimes do," she snaps. "For one thing, I've been having a lot of straight sex for someone who's supposedly infected by some kind of gay spell. For another, talking about being infected by being gay is so fucking homophobic even Eliot would get mad, and he used to think it was funny when people called him a faggot."

Shen Qingqiu goes wide-eyed. "I—what?? It's not—I'm not being homophobic." Is he?? "First of all, it's not happening to everyone, so it doesn't matter what kind of sex you've been having." He doesn't know if it's been happening to any women, actually, which is interesting. "And it's, I'm not saying it's bad that people are gay now. The whole reason I want to find it is so I can take it myself."

This stops Janet, who had been mentally prepping an entire lecture about why you can't talk about gay diseases, in her tracks. She stares at him with incredible suspicion.

"What? Why?"

Shen Qingqiu flushes. He hadn't actually intended to say that out loud, but he couldn't just let Janet accuse him of being a bigot when he'd really tried his whole life (the relevant one)¹ to be an ally. "I, um. I want to take it," he repeats, and then, rolling his eyes, "to be gayer, why else?"

¹ The first one, because - again - there are no gay people in PIDW. It's weird how often he has to specify this in footnotes.

"Yeah, no, I heard you." Janet pinches the bridge of her nose between two fingers, more to show him how annoyed she is than because she needs to. "Why do you want to be gayer? If you want to be gay, aren't you just already gay? Go fuck a man about it."

Edited 2023-10-24 15:35 (UTC)

"I can't do that," Shen Qingqiu objects. "That'd be, like. Queerbaiting."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Janet informs him, "and you're pissing me off."

Shen Qingqiu sighs, crossing his arms. "Queerbaiting is when, like, you pretend to be gay to get stuff you want, but you're actually straight so you can't actually make the people you're baiting happy,"¹ he explains, patiently. "The pollen will make me gay and mean it, even if it wears off later. But by then he'll have moved on to someone else, so it's fine."

¹ IS IT??? IS IT, BUDDY???

This explanation makes absolutely zero sense, so Janet just lets it pass, but her irritation doesn't flag. She's good at unflagging irritation. "Sorry, wait, who? You're trying to make yourself gay for some specific man?" Oh my God. For the millionth time, she silently begs the powers that be to send her Eliot. The look on his face if he heard this conversation...

She sighs, trying to brace herself for whatever idiotic justification she's about to hear next. "So, you're not gay right now. Apparently. But you want to be, because you're... interested in a man. But you're not interested in him in a gay way, but you want to be? Is that it?"

Edited 2023-10-24 16:00 (UTC)

Shen Qingqiu brightens. "Yes! Exactly!" He'd known his queerbaiting explanation would get through to her. He turns back to his plants - there's an odd, fleshy pink flower that seems promising. "So I'm doing a plant survey, because—well, that's how this would work if we were in Proud Immortal Demon Way. I'm starting with what I know. Also because it can't be in the food, or the water supply, because then it would be affecting everyone, and not just a couple people. And it can't be a curse or anything, because I'd be able to detect that immediately." As would Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, obviously.

Janet looks at him for a minute or two longer, deeply pained. What the hell is she supposed to say to someone this completely delusional? "Okay," she says flatly. "I love arguing, but you're not even making it fun right now. So... good luck. I guess."

"What would you even be arguing with me about?" Shen Qingqiu asks, confused. "You said you understood. But, like, thanks, I guess?"

What is wrong with Shen Qingqiu?! Seriously. Even Quentin was more normal about the threesome. Is Shen Qingqiu an even bigger basement dweller than Quentin Coldwater?

"You're gay," she tells him. "Or bi or something. You already like men. Got it?"

Shen Qingqiu scowls at her. "Get your story straight," he retorts. "Am I gay, or am I homophobic?"

Janet stares at him coldly for a moment longer. "Yes," she says flatly before turning on her heel and leaving.

open post: pollen science

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