open post: in a slightly hazy lounge

[peaklordshen]

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?

Comments

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu doesn't, really, want to analyze how he'd felt in that moment, when Binghe's lips had touched his with such tenderness. It doesn't matter how he'd felt, only what he'd done, and being sure to never do it again.

But he doesn't have the same master over his brain he normally does, right now, and he finds himself thinking about it anyway. "Like," he says, slowly, "when you're handed something impossible, something—objectively wonderful but way too much too fast, and you know it's not for you, really, and you don't know what you would do with it if it were. That—that kind of 'help'."

[summerdude]

"Dude, I feel like that all the time," Magnus says. "Do you, um. Want to talk about it?"

[peaklordshen]

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

[summerdude]

"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?"

[peaklordshen]

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?"

[summerdude]

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."

[peaklordshen]

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."

[summerdude]

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?"

[peaklordshen]

"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."

[summerdude]

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

[peaklordshen]

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.

[summerdude]

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?"

[peaklordshen]

"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."

[summerdude]

"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?"

[peaklordshen]

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."

[summerdude]

"Oh," Magnus says, laser-focused on this new information. "You traveled to other worlds, too, huh? Is that why--" he gestures to indicate the clothes. "Is that something, um, expected of you?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu huffs. "Expected is one way to put it," he says. "I guess it's accurate now. Forced onto me would better describe it at first." By the System, obviously. Being free of the OOC lock is relatively recent for him.

[summerdude]

"Forced on you???" This alarms Magnus, and he leans forward. "What kind of world was it?"

[peaklordshen]

"Xianxia," says Shen Qingqiu. "Um--chinese ancient fantasy, kind of. Cultivators and stuff."

[summerdude]

Oh, right. Cultivation. That was the term he'd used before.

Wait-- maybe this is the in Magnus needs to finally figure out Luo Binghe and Lan Wangji's pantheons. He's been trying to find Luo Binghe to ask if he's a Wisdom King for days now, albeit not very hard... he's still not sure of that guy's vibes. Seeing as Magnus has basically been living in a mishmash of modern and ancient Viking fantasy for the past few years, he's pretty sure he understands what Shen Qingqiu is getting at. Didn't Luo Binghe mention there being three worlds? Alex only gets reception on her phone in Midgard. So not having access to a gameboy in an alternate world would make sense.

"Like Hanguang-jun and Luo Binghe, you mean?"

[peaklordshen]

"Right, exactly," says Shen Qingqiu. "I mean, cultivation is pretty cool, I can definitely do cool stuff now. But no one there knows about Pokemon." Except Airplane, but he hasn't told anyone here about Airplane, and for some reason it feels wrong, even though he's not here and never will be. Probably. Unless he does show up. Oh, god, what if he shows up while Shen Qingqiu is still gay???

[summerdude]

"And you were pulled into that world?" Magnus is starting to wonder if he and Shen Qingqiu have more in common than he realized. "With cultivation and no Pokemon?

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu is pretty sure he already said this part, but he's had a lot of conversations tonight and also a lot of pollen. "Yeah," he says, "after I died."

[summerdude]

"So you have died!" Magnus says, and bites back the 'I knew it' before he can say it. He didn't, actually; he'd half-guessed after their first conversation that Shen Qingqiu maybe had, but the man had refused to tell him for sure. "Let me guess. You had a ton of quests and some extremely obnoxious, um, beings getting in the way of you being able to do what you really wanted or needed to after you you got sucked into the no-Pokemon world."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu laughs, a little. "Was I giving off dead vibes?" he asks. Most people are surprised by that part. And then, "Yeah, pretty much. I opted for easy mode in all the quests, but still." He cocks his head, looking at Magnus. "You, too? I thought you were still, like, in your version of Earth, before this."