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He's been at the sand table for well over a shichen, feeling his frown deepen with every strategy he runs. The built up lines of offense and defense blur in his head as the painful tension behind his eyes worsens, but they’re not ready , they don’t have enough of an advantage and there was a chokepoint in their lines they’d have to avoid by shifting northwest—he had to run it again, in different permutations, in hopes something would work better but Mo Xi already knew he wouldn’t find one. There's footsteps outside the tent but he doesn’t care, tsk-ing in displeasure as he swipes at the east corner and knocks a flag representing an entire troop of shield cultivators askew.
Gu Mang comes in with a flick of the tent flap, the sound familiar enough that he doesn't need to react, the event just a blip on the edge of his awareness. "Shidi-shidiii."
Mo Xi makes a noise to indicate he's heard. A hand comes up to his brow, kneading at the growing ache in his temple. He replaces the flag and tries again. Their offense is positioned where the terrain gets troublesome and Mo Xi knows their troops haven't been trained on it, he's going to have to redo the scheme for an aerial attack by bringing in a squadron from the left flank—
“I knew you’d still be staring at it. C’mon, it’s so late already, don’t you have early patrol tomorrow?” Gu Mang’s voice is so warm even when he’s nagging. “I bet you’re not even listening. Ah, what an unfilial shidi I have…”
"Mn."
Gu Mang pretends to be shocked as he comes over to stand by the sand table, falling silent as he assesses the situation. Mo Xi’s simulations are messily done, formations scribbled out in the sand with the barest suggestion of flags propped where while armies could be, but it doesn't matter when he learned the shorthand from Gu Mang. Even if he makes sure to formalize it for any of his real simulations, or in front of any other audience. Mo Xi rubs his aching eyes, abruptly annoyed with the entire layout. It must’ve been the tenth attempt, maybe more; he’d lost count.
Gu Mang makes a hm sound that doesn't bode well at all. “How many times did you run this?”
“…Nine.”
“Mm, yeah. What happened to the first one you were working on?”
Mo Xi waves a hand, dismissive. “Not good enough.” He presses two fingers to his temple again, not that it helps.
“I thought it looked fine.” Gu Mang puts a hand on his shoulder, faintly reproaching. “You shouldn’t be up if your head hurts.”
He’s tired and irritated by his own inability to be perfect , to build something that can be proposed at the war council and receive the right nods from the right people, all older nobles with experience—their faces staunchly unimpressed by anything less than brilliance, the sort of impossible cleverness Gu Mang shows easy as breathing. Mo Xi shrugs away from his touch, prickling. “It doesn’t matter.”
Gu Mang sighs and walks away from him, puttering around the tent and taking off his armour. Mo Xi’s eyes make no sense of the sand table before him, all senses focused on the sounds of rustling cloth and clanking metal.
When Gu Mang comes back to the table he’s in loose robes, soft and rumpled. His face looks golden in the lamplight, the bronzed skin of his forearms visible when he reaches out to poke at one of Mo Xi’s flags. “I meant it about the first one looking right, you know.”
Mo Xi doesn’t respond.
"We’ll run it again tomorrow, alright? You won’t get anywhere trying it hundred times over. Look—there's two different flaws in that," he says, voice going sharp-edged in a way that cuts right through his headache and gets at something soft and vulnerable inside, at the core of him where he wants Gu Mang’s approval more than air. "Three if you account for the weakness in the left flank. Which you should have, because you were there for the briefing."
He sighs, patting Mo Xi's shoulder again and tugging at one sleeve. "You're useless like this and you know it, so come to bed, Mo-shidi."
Mo Xi scrubs at his eyes, the intricate webs of attack and defense crumbling in his head like so much sand slipping out of his grip. He can't even find the flaws Gu Mang's talking about, which says bad things about his own wakefulness.
"C'mere, listen to gege and try it again in the morning, hm?"
Mo Xi gives in. He goes.
-
Only later, when his head is buried in Gu Mang's lap and there's familiar hands in his hair does Mo Xi mumble, disgruntled, "You tricked me, shixiong."
Gu Mang doesn't stop petting him, plucking idly at the pin holding his guan upright and easing it away. Relief washes over him like warmth, cool water on parched skin. "Really?"
"There weren't three flaws, only one." The words come out all muffled, but his head still hurts. He's dimly aware that it's not a very dignified position, but only dimly and too far away to matter. "The weakness in the right flank."
"Ehehe, my shidi is so clever." Gu Mang's laughter is a liquid thing, like sunlight glimmering on the sea. Mo Xi’s eyes stay closed. "See, you must’ve been tired if you didn’t notice it right away.”
Mo Xi snorts. Gu Mang snickers at his own little cleverness, plainly delighted. His fingers comb soothingly through his hair, loose and spilling across the bed. It makes Mo Xi’s blood fizz with something unnameable, an elusive pleasure that has him staying very still in case any movement makes Gu Mang stop.
“Y’know what that strategy was?"
Mo Xi gives him a vague noise, lashes fluttering against his palm as he turns, head pillowed on Gu Mang's thigh. Strategy? Getting him to go to sleep was strategy now?
"Nonsense." Mo Xi says in perfect deadpan even if it comes out muffled. “The scheme of foolishness.”
The Thirty-Six stratagems never suggested goading and prodding your opponent to bed, then coaxing them to lie down in your lap. Gu Mang is so silly.
He gets an exasperated huff from somewhere above him, a show of elaborate disappointment. Gu Mang replies in a tone filled with feigned gravity, pausing with every word. "Luring. The Tiger. From. The. Mountain."
He punctuates that by poking him in the cheek, voice suddenly going warm and teasing in a way that has Mo Xi's face heating up before the words even make sense. "It worked, didn't it, little tiger?"
There's no response that could leave his pride intact, so Mo Xi turns his head and bites at one of Gu Mang's hands. Gu Mang swats at him for it, but he doesn't even bother to move, the featherlight taps falling over his face like rain.
-
Gu Mang is unreasonable, and loud, and smells just a little of lihuabai but Mo Xi doesn't mind at all if it means he gets this: Gu Mang coming back to their tent and curling up around him in bed, warm against the cold outside. The lamps are extinguished and the world’s narrowed down to only them, the heady burr of Gu Mang’s voice as he mumbles, lazy and half-asleep. “Which do you think is the strongest?”
Mo Xi hums. "The scheme of feigned injury."
"Mm, that’s a good one." Gu Mang must smile a little, a telling lilt in his voice. "I think there’s a much more devastating strategy." Mo Xi is so drowsy the words come through as feeling and little else, warm and sunlit. Gu Mang is getting at something but he doesn’t know what, and the thought spirals out like ink in water.
"The scheme of beauty," Gu Mang whispers, considering, and bends to press a kiss to Mo Xi's brow.