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1.
This is Gu Yun's Black Iron Battalion: new and bold and well-armed, a handful of veterans but far more people who have before this only fought in other ways with other commanders, or who have barely fought at all. They have worked hard to pull it together—Grand Marshal Gu and his officers.
And they have done it. Through their first series of battles, the thing has held.
Shen Yi knows that he would remain in this, now, no matter whether it had or not. Gu Yun does that to people, it seems—but it might just be that he does it to Shen Yi.
They don't have the luxury of getting really drunk, but Gu Yun says: "Let's drink."
He has taken a blow to his left shoulder and laughed it off, kept his arm moving when it must have hurt like shit. He had an agility to him still when they met again in the wake of the battle, spent but refusing to acknowledge it, and it was only when he removed the light armour to let the doctor examine him that anyone understood how hard the blow had really been.
"You'd do better just drinking your medicine," Shen Yi says, pitched for Gu Yun alone to hear—if he feels like hearing. It's just the kind of thing that should be said, and no-one else will do so.
Outside, there is a freezing wind which can bite into a person's flesh; inside, it is merely too cold. Gu Yun alone doesn't wear a cloak, and of the people in the tent, Shen Yi alone knows why.
Gu Yun throws his arm around Shen Yi's waist—would normally throw it around his shoulders, but is hiding how stiff he's grown. It creates an odd and intimate feeling, briefly, between them—and then it's nothing, it's not the way you would hold a woman you wanted to pull close, because Shen Yi is not a woman.
They are all young. Gu Yun no longer feels immortal, but acts it.
2.
It is spring, green shoots appearing in the mud, but the air is not yet warm. It has been a month and a half of skirmishes, fought on bad ground, and each one has had its cost.
Gu Yun sits: face bloodless, legs covered in a blanket. The mole below his eye is dull; his eyeglass is in place.
Shen Yi can feel Gu Yun watching him. There's nothing much to look at, but Gu Yun can't see much either.
"Bring my medicine over," Gu Yun says. "I want to read the reports myself."
Shen Yi has not yet begun to truly fret over the medicine, the way he will in the future. He has not seen the shrinking of its efficacy, the way that this is one more trajectory Gu Yun is on with a near-certain conclusion. He has not started to think that it would be better for Gu Yun to begin to adjust to being without it.
He says: "Take the other one first. And eat before the food gets cold.
He would speak with his back turned to Gu Yun, except for the fact that Gu Yun needs to read his lips.
"The medicine," Gu Yun says, stretching his hand out. Not a harsh command yet, but it might become one. They balance between roles.
This is the calculation:
Gu Yun has to eat, and once he has taken his medicine he will not. He will hurry to read reports, and will keep doing so until his head begins to hurt, at which point he will feel too sick to manage food at all, given that he must feel queasy even now.
Shen Yi, irritated, puts the medicine down on the table again, and comes to sit by the bed.
"Fucking eat something," he says. "Do I have to force feed you?"
He grabs a bowl from the tray at Gu Yun's bedside. Picks up a slice of meat from the broth it contains with Gu Yun's chopsticks, and shoves it at Gu Yun.
"Not," Gu Yun says, and does not get the opportunity to add hungry—
He chews the meat Shen Yi has gracelessly forced on him and swallows it down.
"Jiping," he says, "you're truly talented at being a nursemaid. Don't make me tell you to bring my medicine again."
"Or what?" Shen Yi asks—because Gu Yun's tone still did not carry the heavy weight of his true authority.
It would be cleaner to be only commander and subordinate, but on worse days or on far better ones they are other things. It is a worse day.
Gu Yun squints at him. Snatches the chopsticks back and takes another piece of meat, then puts the bowl to his mouth to drink.
He holds his body stiff, sitting there. His graceful waist is heavily bandaged. Is it possible to reinforce light armour further without it costing in mobility?
Shen Yi turns away, swallowing the mess of feelings which cannot be disentangled from one another, and finishes arranging the reports, grouping them by priority—not strategic or military priority, strictly, but according to what Gu Yun would actually most likely prefer to read to himself and what he could stand to have read aloud to him or summarised for him.
He brings Gu Yun his medicine, and the papers; he tidies up as Gu Yun reads. He doesn't feel much like a nursemaid—more like a put-upon wife.
"Lights," Gu Yun says tiredly, after a while. Then: "Jiping, it's still too bright."
Shen Yi sits down beside him on the edge of the bed. Gu Yun has closed his eyes. The room is dim.
When Shen Yi touches Gu Yun's forehead to check his temperature, Gu Yun leans into the touch; grabs Shen Yi by the wrist and puts Shen Yi's hand across his eyes, then lets go.
Shen Yi wants to yell at him again, wants to yell at him for messing around when there had been chain of tangled moments, only a day ago, when Shen Yi had thought that he was—
Gu Yun's eyelashes flutter against Shen Yi's palm. There's a tiny smile in one corner of his exhausted mouth. Shen Yi wants to smack him, in a way that aches inside him.
3.
Early on in the evening, Gu Yun sits between two women, making them laugh. An arm around a waist, a hand on a knee. The surroundings are surprisingly fine for once, the wine sweet. They are at something like leisure, although Gu Yun is forever watchful. Shen Yi can see it on him sometimes: the way he calculates indulgences he can and cannot afford, budgeting pleasure behind his playful eyes.
Later that night, it is Shen Yi's bed that he slips into—quite drunk for once, perfume clinging to his skin.
"When do you think you'll marry?" he asks Shen Yi.
"Not yet," Shen Yi says.
They are young.
Of those who are older than then, many also have yet to marry—but what is to be done about marriage for Gu Yun is a topic of discussion at court, lately, it seems. Gu Yun does not like it brought up.
Shen Yi does think about it—his own. Gu Yun's.
"Hmm," Gu Yun says. "Good."
He lies against Shen Yi. His body is not that heavy. Unarmoured, he is only a person.
"Good?" Shen Yi asks—mildly indignant, mildly inclined to find Gu Yun's bleary nonsense amusing. "Did you take a wrong turn looking for somewhere to amuse yourself? Get out."
"Well," Gu Yun says, "You shouldn't marry yet. I need all of your attention, don't I?"
He did not say so yesterday, or last week—he does not ever say so—he teases. Gloats over his good looks, the way he is always the one who draws women's eyes. As far as Shen Yi knows, he spends more time in men's beds than women's, but not as much time in either as he'd like others to think—as far as Shen Yi knows, Gu Yun would find the idea of being with a man outside of a bed laughable. It's just more convenient—when it comes to relieving tension. You do things that are practical and then you do things that you should do.
He will only reconsider the nuances of Gu Yun's behaviour years from now, when Gu Yun is already another man's problem to deal with. He will not reconsider the nuances of his own behaviour for even longer than that.
Shen Yi says: "Apparently you do. I told you to get out."
Gu Yun's hand is on his waist, just lying there. He is acting boneless. His breath is warm against Shen Yi's shoulder.
"Disrespectful," he mumbles. Then, coaxingly, as though he has forgotten whose bed he is in: "Be a little sweeter. Come here."
Shen Yi pushes him out of the bed.
Gu Yun bursts out laughing. Scrambles back into bed, shoving to make space for himself.
4.
Shen Yi maintains Gu Yun's equipment himself: armour, bow, windslasher. It isn't only because Gu Yun is Gu Yun; it's also because Shen Yi is Shen Yi. A mechanic at heart.
"You still haven't had your name carved, Marshal," he says, one summer day.
Gu Yun usually ignores this comment, turning conveniently deaf even if the mole on his ear is glowing brightly.
But today he tilts his head, and says: "I'm never going to. Don't worry about it. You're going to give yourself wrinkles."
He puts an arm around Shen Yi's neck, prods the furrow between Shen Yi's eyebrows with a finger. He is close and warm, his smile as sharp as ever.
Shen Yi's hands are smeared with oil. The smell of it fills the air between them, tinged with violet gold. The blade of the windslasher sits on his workbench, detached from its slot so that Shen Yi can get at the propulsion mechanism.
"I have a task for you," Gu Yun says. Words close to Shen Yi's ear. "It's about the supply line."
Which means the black market.
Shen Yi gives Gu Yun his hand, and Gu Yun writes the task out on his palm.
"Understood," Shen Yi says.
Gu Yun's hand lingers. Finer than Shen Yi's, and already somewhat scarred. A pale stripe or scar tissue between first and second knuckles, stretching across three fingers. A deeper mark on the side of his palm—a bone broke with that strike, and Gu Yun cursed about it constantly because he felt stupid for letting it happen.
They both watch their hands where they're touching. Gu Yun twitches his fingers into a fist, knocks his fist lightly on Shen Yi's palm—withdraws with a laugh.
Shen Yi shakes his head, and returns to work on the windslasher. There are scratches in the metal here and there, where the mark made was too deep to be quickly smoothed out; every well-used windslasher has these, but this is the only one whose marks of use Shen Yi has made himself intimately familiar with. Shapes and placements. He is sure that he would know it was Gu Yun's by touch.