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]

"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."

[summerdude]

"Nah, man, it was just the way you reacted when we talked about it before," Magnus says -- reassuringly, he thinks. "And I could access Midgard, but technically nope. I spent most of my time in other worlds."

His mind is whirling as he talks. It makes so much sense that this cultivation stuff he's been hearing about exists beyond the veil Annabeth calls Mist and he calls the Glamour of Ginnungagap. Probably there are cultivators just walking around China hiding their abilities from mortals, right? But are they all gods, or is it more complicated than that And Shen Qingqiu - would that make him a demigod, too, or just someone who got recruited for having the right qualities, like some of Magnus's friends? "Did you have any connection to the world you got pulled into?" he asks. "Before you died?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu snorts, rolling his eyes. "You could say that, yeah," he said. "I read all about it. The whole thing, start to finish." Multiple times, but he doesn't have to admit to that, and so he won't. "Not that it did me much good, once I was in there."

[summerdude]

Magnus is practically vibrating at this point. Shen Qingqiu started cultivating after he landed in the new world... a world that, it sounds like, has vast legendary significance where he's from. He's totally a demigod!!! Or whatever the Chinese equivalent is!!!! He wonders who Shen Qingqiu's godly parent is, and how to delicately phrase that question.

"It didn't?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. "It turns out knowing the tropes and events of a place doesn't really help you, like, navigate that place," he says, "even though it definitely should. I even feel like it should, here, even though this place barely even has a uniform reality, forget a uniform genre." He says this mournfully, and a little disgruntled, as if the Mansion's lack of narrative coherence is a personal slight.

[summerdude]

"At least you have some people from your world?" Magnus says. "Other..." He cuts himself off before he can say 'gods.' "Cultivators?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu nods. "I'm glad to be here with Binghe," he says, fondly, and then he makes a face. "The others--I imagine Lan Wangji has conveyed his bad opinion of me to his husband by now, so."

[summerdude]

Binghe... Luo Binghe, the blood god? Hm. Magnus supposes he can see the appeal, and Luo Binghe seems miles better than Loki. It makes sense that a god would be kind to their devotees. But... even after that weird dream encounter with him, Magnus is pretty sure Lan Wangji is, like, unparalleled among the gods he's met, so... "Why would Lan Wangji have a bad opinion of you?" he asks.

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, you know," says Shen Qingqiu. He doesn't really want to get into the whole blood parasite thing right now. "I disappointed him pretty bad, it's. It's whatever."

[summerdude]

Something pings in the back of Magnus's mind. Gods don't usually become easily disappointed. Or, well. They do, super easily, but usually that results in death, dismemberment, dismay, et cetera. A disappointed god who doesn't harm someone must, on some level, care about them. "Aren't you, like, a super good cultivator too?" Magnus asks.

[peaklordshen]

"Oh," says Shen Qingqiu. "Yeah, I don't mean he's disappointed with my cultivation, he barely even knows half the things I can do." And can do less than half of them, but that feels needlessly mean to say. Maybe he's nicer when he's gay. "We just, um. Had a disagreement, a while ago. I've been pretty much avoiding him since."

[summerdude]

Is it -- could it be -- surely there's no way. "Was the disagreement in your former world?" Magnus asks. It could just be, like, a creative difference in training. Maybe he's getting ahead of himself. But also, he feels like he's getting measure of Shen Qingqiu -- inquisitive, but full of self-doubt at really weird times, reluctant to go all-in on certain things, but passionate about his interests and abilities -- and he can picture the kind of, well.

The kind of demigod who, if confronted with his dad in an unfamiliar place, might demand to know why he'd been ignored. Maybe even after being yanked into an unfamiliar world of... cultivation-pantheon. Magnus still isn't fully clear on that last part.

"Or, um. Did he meet you for the first time here?"

[peaklordshen]

"We met here, yeah," says Shen Qingqiu, "though like, I knew who he was, before I died. His, um, exploits and stuff. There's a c-drama about him," he explains. "But it's like they say, I guess. Never meet your heroes."

[summerdude]

"I have some friends who've had similar experiences," Magnus says. "With, um, movies that... misrepresent certain details. About, you know. People they later disagree with. I'm sorry, dude."

[peaklordshen]

The main thing CQL had gotten wrong about Lan Wangji was, apparently, his relationship with Wei Wuxian, but that had been pretty unsettling to Shen Qingqiu when he first arrived, so he appreciates the apology. "Thanks," he says. "Like I said, I'm mainly just avoiding him. I mean, also because he sort of tried to exorcise me." He thinks about how he feels about this, and then, out loud, with his mouth, says "LOL."

[summerdude]

If Magnus was holding something, he would have dropped it. "He WHAT?"

[peaklordshen]

"There was a whole thing, a couple weeks ago," says Shen Qingqiu. "Bunch of us got, like, age-regressed, I ran into Hanguang-jun, he nearly yeeted me into the void." He shrugs. "I'm not actually mad at him about this part—it's like, what he does, you know? I am, technically, a restless spirit. I just don't want him to do it again, at least not until I get the chance to, um." He flushes, and gestures at himself, trying to convey the whole bl pollen thing without derailing back into who he wants to kiss and why.

[summerdude]

Gods, Magnus read Lan Wangji so wrong. But between the slow introduction of his surveillance of a rival like Luo Binghe -- which, Magnus supposes, makes sense, if Lan Wangji's own son has sworn fealty to the other god in some indescribable way -- and this sudden revelation, he's starting to realize that Hanguang-jun is... perhaps not as bad as Loki, but perhaps callous or even sinister? No, surely not, he doesn't seem like it -- but maybe; gods can be incredibly deceptive -- in a different way altogether.

"I won't let him exorcise you," Magnus says, stoutly. He may be just another demigod, like Shen Qingqiu, but maybe two dead demigods from different pantheons working together can withstand such an attack, or find a way to stop it before it has a chance to begin.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu is sincerely very touched. What dedication to his cause of being able to kiss a boy before he dies! Magnus is a true and brave soul indeed. "Thank you," he says again, with much more feeling behind it. "Can I give you a hug?"