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.

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[timebethine]

"I could no more be jealous of sharing him than of sharing the sunlight," Laertes says, smiling. "He illuminates all that he touches with warmth and radiance; he shakes off the veiling mists of melancholy, and lets me see the world as it is and might be. He hath a generous heart, and I love him for it."

[peaklordshen]

Some of Shen Qingqiu's annoyance toward Laertes fades. It's hard to feel so defensive in the face of such honest and beautifully-expressed feeling for someone he cares about. Plus—he does get it. Even if he does find the BL pollen and he does sleep with Binghe, and even if that meant anything outside of that night, which is a lot of ifs, he could never imagine demanding all of Binghe's time and attention. For one thing, his poor body would break right in half! Binghe is a Stallion Protagonist!

"Binghe has many wives," he mutters, conceding—something. He's not looking too closely at what. "Though none here, as of yet. I would not deny them the pleasure of him, either." He tries to layer that would with all his aforementioned ifs, suddenly too tired to lay them all out plainly.

[timebethine]

Still smiling, Laertes rises from his chair. "I hope this love potion is a sovereign remedy for all that ails thee," he says. "And for what it's worth--I hope he answers thy love in kind."

[peaklordshen]

It's not a love potion, Shen Qingqiu wants to protest, because he would never love potion Luo Binghe—it wouldn't solve their problem, and anyway once it wore off Luo Binghe would definitely know he'd been drugged and would not be happy about it. But he doesn't want to get into all that—he wants no more of Laertes' disturbing ability to read his mind even better than Nina, thank you very much. So: "Thank you," he says, with all the dignity he can muster,¹ and turns back to his plants.

¹ Not very much dignity at all, right now.