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

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you." He wants to say, I'm not easy to be friends with, but isn't friends a presumption? He settles for, "You've been very kind to me."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu flushes and turns away. "Everyone should be kind to you,"¹ he says, busying himself with straightening random bits of flower and stem on the table.

¹ He means this dismissively - everyone should be, so I'm not special - but he also just means it.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He said that too."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu frowns, a little, at the tabletop. That doesn't sound like the Claudius he knows, but he's glad he can behave himself with some people. "Then you already have a second opinion," he says. "You should probably believe us."

[onthewillowsthere]

The faintest laugh. "Thank you," again. He begins placing the flowers on the table so he can try to assemble them in something like an arrangement.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu waves off his thanks and sets about helping him, murmuring suggestions and using a discarded leaf imbued with spiritual energy to trim the flowers to different lengths so the heads don't crowd.¹ He tries not to take over entirely, though--this is Galahad's arrangement, not his.

¹ He's not going to notice this about himself, but he's quite good at this. He's got a good aesthetic sense and is a perfectionist about the details.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is, honestly, very used to letting someone else tell him what to do, and he tends to take whatever suggestions Shen Qingqiu makes. It feels different from listening to God, and not just because Shen Qingqiu is not God. Shen Qingqiu wants to help him make something good because he cares about this because Galahad cares about it.

It's also just pleasant to work on something with the company of another person he likes. He doesn't say much, but he responds if Shen Qingqiu addresses him, and he appreciates Shen Qingqiu's occasional touches, the moments when their hands brush or their shoulders bump. It feels like being around Percival, but without the agony of desire. It's nice. It makes him want to think of other things they could do together, and he finds himself actually thinking about the future as something he might at some point anticipate instead of dread.

Eventually it seems there's little more to do with the arrangement; the flowers are gathered in a fanned-out spray, and wired together carefully with floral wire. He can tell that Shen Qingqiu's help has made something better than he could do on his own.

[peaklordshen]

"There," says Shen Qingqiu, stepping back. "Are you happy with that?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's beautiful." He looks up at Shen Qingqiu. "I've never made anything before."

[peaklordshen]

"You've never made anything?" Shen Qingqiu asks, surprised. "Not even as a child?"

He's not sure Claudius deserves the first thing made by Galahad's hands. That feels big.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I had chores, and prayer. I was busy," he says, but he's beginning to have an idea of how this sounds to anyone else.

[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."

[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."

[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."