peaklordshen | open post: in a slightly hazy lounge

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open post: in a slightly hazy lounge

After a few false starts, Shen Qingqiu has found a proper place to test out Crowley's BL pollen vape pen.

He posts up in one of the lounges, close enough to the bar that anyone leaving there might find him. He's still in his braid and loose robes - no one else had noticeably started dressing gayer¹ when they took the stuff, intentional or not, so neither will he. He also brings snacks,² and the next book in the Blood at Dusk series, Moonless Midnight, in case it takes a while to kick in, or a while for anyone to come along to prove it has, anyway. If no one finds him here he will go looking, but roaming the Mansion's halls newly homosexual feels like a much more risky prospect than just staying put and seeing what happens.

He arrays himself on a couch, feet tucked up under him (although this might not be immediately apparent due to the robes), Crowley's pen tucked behind one ear so he can make more notes now that he has a glimmer of a chance that Binghe will forgive him,³ and takes a drag on the vape.

He coughs. It's smoke, not pollen—the blooms must be dried and then burned, like with tobacco—and has an odd, kind of greenish flavor. Not unpleasant, but not pleasant, either. He expected it to taste of, like. Cherry blossom, or something. Pink rather than green. Shit, maybe he is a little homophobic.

He takes another drag, and lets the smoke out of his mouth slowly this time, watching it curl up to the ceiling.

By the time anyone finds him, he will be staring unblinking at the opposite wall, book open on his lap to the third page of the first chapter.

[Threads with Sagramore and Luo Binghe are NSFW.]

¹ Please explain what you mean by this, Shen Qingqiu. I'll wait.
² Crowley did tell him to.
³ After he confirms that the pollen works. And goes to find Binghe. And kisses him. And— well. Maybe. After. He can raise the book club idea again?

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Shen Qingqiu gives him a look, half unimpressed, half pleading. "Aren't we already talking about it?"

"I mean, like, specifically," Magnus says. "Talk about it on purpose. I don't know, man, isn't it good manners to check in about this sort of thing?" He regards Shen Qingqiu for a moment. "Like I said, I feel like that all the time. Not about becoming gay, I got on board really fast with that one because, like, obviously! Dudes! But becoming an einherji and stuff?" He shrugs. "Mostly my philosophy is to just go with it. Can't go backwards so might as well go all in, you know?"

Claudius shakes hands rarely -- with Grantaire, last -- but he quite likes it. He warmly clasps Shen Qingqiu's hand, to seal a pact as allies.

Luo Binghe has more to discuss. As always, he is too greedy, wanting more and more even when already given the most anyone could ask for. He wanted to talk about Blood at Dusk—he has much to say about Shen Qingqiu's uncharitable view of Ted. And he has not forgotten about the poison.

But he can tell that Shen Qingqiu is dozing off. The rise and fall of his chest is slowing. It's Luo Binghe's nature to try and spend all his pleasures at once, too accustomed to the cruelty of the world to trust that the opportunity will still be there in the future. But he will try to calm himself, to let Shen Qingqiu rest. He deserves it.

Luo Binghe raises his head to look at him, eager to see how beautiful he is in repose—as he is beautiful in movement—as he is perfect at all times. Shen Qingqiu's hair is sweetly mussed, his eyelashes stark against his skin, his mouth slightly open and begging to be kissed. Luo Binghe does kiss it, just once, very softly. His heart hurts from trying to contain how much he feels.

Carefully, without disturbing Shen Qingqiu, he takes the annotated copy of Blood at Dusk from his ring, and uses his qi to float it to the other side of the bed, where Shen Qingqiu will see it when he wakes. After he and Sagramore finished with things, Luo Binghe stayed up most of the night writing responses to all of Shen Qingqiu's notes, half-dead with longing and self-conscious of how formal and stiff his own writing looked under Shen Qingqiu's cutely passionate scrawl.

Now to important matters. Luo Binghe does need to sleep, but only every few days. He could easily stay up and watch Shen Qingqiu breathe peacefully until he awakens, and if this weren't so urgent, he would. Instead he settles himself back against Shen Qingqiu's side, reaching up to lift Shen Qingqiu's hand and put it back on his head, even though Shen Qingqiu is now too asleep to keep petting him. Then he closes his eyes and sinks into Shen Qingqiu's dreamscape.

It is tempting to replay the encounter they just concluded from Shen Qingqiu's perspective—to seek out confirmation that his pleasure wasn't feigned. It is even more tempting to dive into the past few days when they were fighting, to see what made Shen Qingqiu realize how much he wanted Luo Binghe. What stops him is fear. Shen Qingqiu was angry at him, or maybe hurt by what Luo Binghe said; he would rather live in the current moment, when they are united in feeling and shared understanding.¹

So he sifts through Shen Qingqiu's memories for events related to the poison. It's quickly clear that Shen Qingqiu has been suffering the effects of Without-a-Cure for a long time. Luo Binghe flips through what seems like endless sessions of meridian-clearing with a threateningly handsome man, who sits close and touches Shen Qingqiu's wrist with an intimacy that makes Luo Binghe seethe. He looks familiar, and after a dozen or so of these scenes, Luo Binghe places him—Liu Qingge, the Bai Zhan Peak Lord who died when Luo Binghe was fifteen. Of course this Shen Qingqiu is too good to have murdered him. Luo Binghe would never say it to Liu Mingyan, but seeing the way the man looks at Shen Qingqiu, it seems maybe his death was not the great loss Luo Binghe imagined.

When he comes across the moment of poisoning, he is surprised to see his own face, younger and dressed in the disciple robes of Qing Jing Peak. Luo Binghe hates thinking of his younger self; his first reaction to this vision, before he even registers what's happening, is revulsion. Then he recognizes what he's seeing. It is his fight with the hundred-year-old demon Tianchui², which Shen Qingqiu pressed him into in the obvious hope that he would die in the attempt. (If that version of Shen Qingqiu could have been said to hope for anything; it was a cold, almost bored attempt on Luo Binghe's young life.)

He is seeing the same event, but refracted through a different lense—not only from Shen Qingqiu's perspective, but from the universe where Luo Binghe is loved. He can see it at once. The young Binghe, too fresh-faced and naive to conceal his emotions, is brimming over with pride and desperation to please, and Shen Qingqiu acknowledges it—acknowledges him—tells him he's done well. The memory is sweet and cottony-soft, but Luo Binghe, watching, is bitter as turned wine. Why should this Binghe get to be so happy? He has not accomplished anything, not a single one of the victories Luo Binghe clawed from nothing in order to earn the right to be proud of himself.

Then the defeated demon charges, his spiked armor shining with poison. Luo Binghe remembers this—he dodged at the last moment, but this Binghe is stupidly distracted by gazing at his shizun's face, soaking up every drop of approval that may come his way. Shen Qingqiu notices before him. He pushes Binghe out of the way, and—even in the memory, Luo Binghe wants to stop it—throws himself in the demon's path.

Shen Qingqiu passes out soon after that—after some bluster over not being poisoned, during which he dares Sha Hualing to attempt to kill him. He must have had a plan that the memory hasn't preserved; Shen Qingqiu is too intelligent to simply put himself in the path of a fatal blow because he does not want to admit he's been poisoned.³ The memory blurs and turns dark, but one thing stands out clearly: young Binghe's face. Devastated, terrified, but above all disbelieving.

Luo Binghe understands him perfectly. The younger Binghe had no value to the Peak, and no value to any person. Shen Qingqiu is one of the most powerful cultivators in the world, and yet he put himself in front of his disciple—he valued Binghe's life above his own. While the Shen Qingqiu that Luo Binghe knew was sending a fifteen-year-old to his death, this Shen Qingqiu was chiding him for not being more careful, for making his shizun worry. The sight of it that face is sharp as broken glass; it seems to cut him.

He breaks off the dream. Back in his waking body, he is trembling, his grip around Shen Qingqiu far too tight. Luo Binghe presses his face to Shen Qingqiu's shoulder so hard he almost can't breathe, trying to drown himself in Shen Qingqiu's skin.

He understands everything now. He understands his other self, in Shen Qingqiu's world—how he must have adored his shizun. And Shen Qingqiu. How nothing but Luo Binghe mattered to him. Why it was so easy for him to say, when he arrived, that Luo Binghe was good in all things.

To put someone's life before your own; can there be any other definition of love? Even though Luo Binghe was young, even if it wasn't charged with the desire Shen Qingqiu feels now.

Luo Binghe no longer cares if this place is a test, or a trap. If it is a dream, let him never wake. If it is false, let him never discover what is true. Shen Qingqiu put him before all else; he will do the same, for as long as he is able.

¹Perfect understanding!
²"Heavenly Hammer"; he wields a big hammer. Airplane sucks at names.
³Of course this is exactly what happened.

Shen Qingqiu wakes up over-warm, sore, and to the completely alien feeling of being held. The smell of the person holding him is familiar, and he breathes in the comfort of it before he comes fully awake, and then he goes very, very still.

That's--Bingge. He opens his eyes. Bingge, one arm flung across his stomach, Shen Qingqiu's hand in his hair. He looks so sweet, in sleep, the gravitas and power he wields effortlessly in his waking life fading away and leaving just--a man, handsome and vulnerable like any other man at rest, his forehead smooth of worries, his full mouth relaxed into what could, from some angles, be mistaken for a smile.

The dawn is grey through the windows. If Shen Qingqiu were a wife in truth--if he didn't need the pollen; if Bingge cared for him as more than a novelty, a revelation, the only man here from his own world that Bingge could show his mastery over; he would be able to stay. He would be able to kiss Binghe awake and then keep kissing him, would be able to tease until Binghe pressed him to the bed again. Binghe would still move on, of course, still chase after some brighter star, but he would have--days, probably, maybe weeks with how slowly Binghe has been moving since they got here.

But--instead he had one night, and now he needs to go.

He carefully disentangles himself from Binghe's arms and slips out of bed, replacing his body with one of Binghe's many pillows. He notices the copy of Blood at Dusk by the bedside. Ah. Binghe, ever thoughtful, must be returning it to him, putting it somewhere where he would see when he woke up so he would know to take it when he left. That, too, confirms what he already believed; this is the right move, the expected one, to sneak out before Binghe wakes.

He takes a last look at him; the dark sweep of his lashes on his cheeks, the striking crimson mark at the center of his forehead. He remembers the way he shivered, when he kissed it last night; he can't help but lean down to do it again, ever so softly, so he won't wake him up, and then he gathers his things and flees.

Shen Qingqiu is not actually sure you can't go backwards, but then, he's older and wiser than Magnus, even if he feels as awkward as a teen about all of this stuff. "Currently I'm kind of trying to, um. Dip my toes?"

Magnus considers this, too. "You know what they say," he says. "You get used to the water a lot more quickly if you jump straight in. Same thing for being an einherji." You get used to being death and semi-invincible pretty quickly the second time you die, after all! "Same thing for kissing dudes."

Shen Qingqiu frowns, a little. "Okay, wait," he says. "This metaphor is getting confused. Because I am jumping straight in, because jumping in implies you can get out again, you actually, like, have to, but what you're saying, is, like, the best way to learn to swim is to have already been a fish, and I'm not, and I can't."

Magnus frowns. He doesn't think he's getting a contact high, but he is getting confused. "No, I'm saying you jump in and then you turn into a fish once you're in the water." He scratches his head for a moment, then explains: "In my opinion if you want to kiss a dude, you're probably into kissing dudes on some level. So you should keep doing it. And if it's overwhelming, you can take time, but sometimes it's easier to take it as a foregone conclusion and keep at it. Does that make sense?"

"Not really," says Shen Qingqiu, "but thanks anyway. I think you just have, like, the turning-into-fish gene and I don't." He props his head in his hand. "It's like cultivation. Ostensibly everyone can learn to turn into a fish, but some people get started too late, and the kissing never, like," he waves a hand. "Takes."

"And this, um, plant," Magnus says, trying to treat the situation with as much gravity as Shen Qingqiu is. "Is it working?

Shen Qingqiu nods, embarrassed. "Um, conclusively, I'd say."¹ Categorically, even, with Claudius. Which makes Shen Qingqiu realize—Magnus is from 2015. He brightens. "Hey," he says, "do you like Pokemon?"

¹ Magnus has caught him between his encounter with Sagramore and his encounter with Binghe.

Shen Qingqiu considers this. Most of what he's drawn in the last few years has been landscapes—the beautiful, stirring, birds-and-mountains paintings that are expected of a Peak Lord of the Arts Peak. He's done an occasional bit of fanart for Airplane - anime stuff, and once an imagined portrait of aged-up Binghe because Airplane wouldn't stop bothering him about it¹ that he cringes to think about now - his hair had not been Nearly lustrous enough, and he'd gotten the jawline all wrong. He has a pending portrait date with Galahad, but he probably shouldn't turn that into a pitch meeting—although it would be cute; a tiny chibi Galahad on a tiny chibi horse, questing for—um, whatever he'd been questing for, before he came here and started questing for kisses from murderous kings.

Certainly cartoonier style seems easier to animate in, but thinking that immediately kind of seems insulting to people with cartoonier styles. "I'm not actually sure," he says. "I have a couple styles that could work. Is there visual art you particularly like?"

¹ Airplane had said, exactly once, "It's a shame you never did any Bingge fanart, bro," and Shen Qingqiu had instantly started working. It took many hours.

So Shen Qingqiu is just going through it, then. "Okay," Magnus says. "If you wanna talk about it after your, um, plant stops working, though, I can do that. And -- yeah, I do; you know Pokemon?"

"I love Pokemon," says Shen Qingqiu, with vast relief not to be talking about being gay anymore. He reaches into his sleeve, fumbling around for a minute, and pulls out the Gameboy he'd been given on kiddification plot day. "Look what I found."

"It's trash," says Shen Qingqiu. "How about yours? How's the writing? Lot of melodrama? Does your guy—uh, your God—at least care about worldbuilding?"

He looks thoughtful. "I'm afraid I never paid much mind to visual art unless the artist was particularly lauded¹. This is your pet project, though, and as happy as I am to collaborate, I feel you should steer the ship."

¹ Unfortunately for those artists, we'll just say.

"Dude," Magnus says, glancing at the Gameboy. He'd never had one -- or if he had, he'd been a kid at the time and lost it over the years. "You play that thing? Where you're from?"

Oh, right, he'd been trying to keep up the wise cultivator persona in front of this kid. The reasons why, though, evade him, and anyway they pale in comparison to the excitement of being able to talk about Pokemon with someone who actually knows what he's talking about in more than vague terms (sorry, Nightingale).

"Yeah," he says. "I mean--I didn't have one in the world I was just in, before this, but I'm from Earth originally. Shanghai."

"Okay!" Jasin isn't giving him much to work with, but that's alright. Shen Qingqiu will just—come up with something, and show him, and if it sucks they'll never have to speak of it ever again, or of anything else, because humiliating himself in front of a handsome and talented musician feels, right now, while he's gay, like it would be a death sentence. He'll just—go live in the woods and hopefully by then Binghe will like him enough to sometimes bring him snacks. "Thank you for humoring me. I'll come find you when I have some, like, character designs and stuff."

He smiles faintly and nods. "It's hardly humoring. It's a chance to use my talents, which I will hardly begrudge. Come to me with your designs, and, perhaps, and idea of what will actually be happening in the animation."

Shen Qingqiu flushes. "Right, yes, I'll do a whole—yeah." He waves a hand. "You'll be able to visualize it. I hope."

"I have every faith," he says, admittedly somewhat amused at this point.

Shen Qingqiu nods at him. "Thanks," he says, again. He finds his notebook and flips it open at random. He hadn't expected to be spending his gay hours drawing, but he's feeling a little self-conscious, now, like he has to do a good job. Maybe if he gets really absorbed Jasin will leave and he can go back to thinking about Binghe.

"I'll leave you to it, then." He stands. "I look forward to seeing what you come up with."

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open post: in a slightly hazy lounge

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