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

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale is, at first glance, a rather prim and proper sort, the kind of man whom one might assume had maintained a charming naivete about substances of varying legality. This would be a very mistaken impression. Not only is he more interesting than he initially appears, he is also a police officer in modern London. The smell of weed is a near-constant companion for a copper on the streets, and one he is accustomed to cheerily turning a blind eye to.

"All right over there?" he asks, amused.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu blinks and looks up. Oh! It's the handsome but gloomy gentleman from the first day!! Shen Qingqiu hasn't seen him since. He's delighted—for scientific reasons—to find he'd quite like to put a hand on his jaw and touch his stubble. But—his thoughts turn serious. He has—a sidequest. Of some kind. Concerning this guy. He'd written it in his notebook—oh, right. Pokemon types.

He sits up, turning to face Nightingale. "I have some questions for you," he says, face very serious.

[rememberettersberg]

Well. This should certainly be interesting. "I am at your service," Nightingale proclaims, sitting down beside him.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qinqgiu does pull out his notebook for this one, finding his entry on Nightingale. "Alright," he says, retrieving his pen from behind his ear. Hm——where to begin? He's never done this interview style before. "What would you say your favorite element is? Like, the western ones—earth, air, fire, water—but wood and metal count, too."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale blinks and pulls out his own notebook, wanting to take notes on whatever this is.

"I think probably fire." Ironic, really, given how often his apprentice manages to set things alight. Perhaps it's some sort of Stockholm Syndrome adjacent issue.

[peaklordshen]

Nice. Shen Qingqiu writes that down. They don't have a ton of fire representation in the Mansion—Galahad's the only one so far. "Okay. Um. Do you have any pets?" he asks, and then, as the thought occurs, "wait, oh my god, do you think we could ask the Mansion for pets?" He would do anything to be petting a dog right now. "I would do anything to be petting a dog right now."

[rememberettersberg]

"Er, he's not my pet exactly, but I do live with a dog. Yappy little chap called Toby." Thinking about it, he's not sure where Toby ended up after the terrible day that had led Nightingale here. He shakes his head to will the whole topic away. "Perhaps so. It's worth a try, at any rate."

[peaklordshen]

"You have a little dog?" Shen Qingqiu asks, delighted. He shifts so he's sitting sideways, facing him with his knees pulled up to his chest, and examines Nightingale with his head cocked. "That's adorable," he says.

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale smiles indulgently. "Mm, a terrier. He smells terrible and he's an absolute fiend for stealing food, but... I'm quite fond of him all the same."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head, eyes crinkled up. "If he lives in your house, it's not stealing. It's as much his food as yours." He rests his chin on his knee. "Is it just the two of you?" He doesn't think Nightingale has been BL pollened, yet; he hasn't heard any rumors of any entanglements here (though Janet had to have been having straight sex with someone). Maybe he has a wife, at home.

[rememberettersberg]

"My home is also my workplace. I share it with two... I share it with an apprentice and a housekeeper." Don't think about the other apprentice, Thomas. Don't. "May I ask what these questions are in aid of?" He grins, attempting to lighten his own mood. "I haven't seen you since your arrival here."

[peaklordshen]

"Oh yeah!" Shen Qingqiu turns back to his notebook. He'd been distracted by imagining Nightingale with a tiny little dog, tucked under his arm. Doing like, celebrity photoshoots--maybe in dramatic black & white, the wind stirring his hair. If he were gay back in the real world, Shen Qingqiu would buy magazines from the grocery store just for a photoshoot like that.

"Um--it's kind of a hobby. I've--there's this--" how does he explain Pokemon to someone from--whenever Nightingale is from?? Then again, Shen Qingqiu doesn't exactly look like a guy who knows what Pokemon are. He squints, a little. "Do you, like, know what a video game is?" he asks, just in case.

[rememberettersberg]

"I'm aware of the concept," says Nightingale. He emphatically does not mention his secret attempts to play video games when Peter is nowhere near his tech cave. "The 21st century hasn't entirely passed me by."

[peaklordshen]

Oh! "Honestly," Shen Qingqiu says apologetically, "I wasn't sure you'd met the 21st century at all."

[rememberettersberg]

"If it's any consolation, I really wasn't supposed to." There's a dry humour to his tone that makes the statement less worrying. "Though I must admit that I wouldn't have taken you for the video games type either."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu laughs. "No," he says, "I'm—yeah." He leans a little closer, like he's sharing a secret. "I didn't always look like this."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale raises an eyebrow, not sure whether to take this as a comment on normal appearance changes through life or something else. "I last looked like this around 70 years ago," he says. He really does enjoy getting to say these things out loud without worry.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu blinks out of sharing secrets mode and right into hearing lore mode. "What does that mean?" he asks, fascinated. "Are you, like, aging backwards?"

[rememberettersberg]

"Slowly, yes." Nightingale shrugs and gives a rueful smile. "It began some time in the 1960s, I think, when I was in my sixties too." A pause. "What happened to you?"

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, this isn't my original body," says Shen Qingqiu absently, distracted by trying to do the math. If Nightingale was in his sixties in the 1960s, and he has met the 21st century, that means he's at least a hundred years old. What do you even call a handsome man that age? A gilf? A great-gilf?

[rememberettersberg]

"... What happened to the original one?" It's the first of about a hundred questions crowding for a turn out of his mouth. "And how?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu remembers he's really not supposed to be spreading around the whole ghost thing. "I, um." He squints. "My soul... was kidnapped? Into a book I was reading. Kind of like coming here, except it was just my soul. Ended up in the body of the scum villain."

[rememberettersberg]

There's not a hint of disbelief left in Nightingale, not any more. "No wonder you were a different sort of perturbed than the rest of us upon arrival here. What sort of story did you land in?"

[peaklordshen]

"Absolute trash," says Shen Qingqiu, immediately, straightening up. "Just—complete and utter garbage, but the kind of garbage you can't stop reading. There's the seed of a good idea there, you know? A character¹ you really care about. But he's constantly mistreated by the narrative, like, WAY beyond what's necessary for his character arc, and every chapter you're introduced to a thousand useless cannon fodder characters, just for them to be slaughtered offscreen in the next update two weeks later. And don't get me started on the wives." It is very clear he desperately wants Nightingale to get him started on the wives.

¹ This footnote is so obvious the typist forgot to put it in at first, but. Luo Binghe.

[rememberettersberg]

Honestly, Nightingale has sort of forgotten where this conversation even began but he's fascinated by whatever's happening here. "The wives... all of them for the same man? The character you care about?"