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Shang sees the disaster starting across the hall, but there are too many tables between him and it - he starts moving anyway, knowing he’s going to be too late.
“Drink, drink, drink,” the soldiers chant, and little Ping upends his cup in one impressively long swallow.
Shang grits his teeth as Yao refills the cup. Ping drains it again.
Shang does not need the weedy little lad to die of alcohol poisoning. He dodges around a group of soldiers playing dice and tries to pick up speed.
Ping drinks a third cup. A fourth. A fifth, and then Shang is standing over the group of trouble-makers and glowering down at them.
“Captain!” Ping says brightly. He’s slightly pink around the ears, but he’s sitting up straight and not noticeably swaying at all. “Come to wet your whistle?”
“That’ll be enough drinking for tonight, I think,” Shang says, and hauls Ping to his feet, giving Yao a scowl. Yao looks sheepish. “Come on, soldier.”
“Yessir,” Ping says, and follows Shang out, walking easily without any hint of a stagger. Once they’re out of the mess hall, Shang eyes the younger man dubiously.
“How are you not falling down drunk?” he asks once they’ve made it most of the way to the barracks.
Ping laughs. “On that? My grandmother’s baijiu is three times that strong, and I was drinking that by the time I was ten.”
Shang blinks. Ping doesn’t look like he ought to have an alcohol tolerance fit for a man three times his size. He’s scrawny. But he’s bright-eyed and apparently untouched by five drinks of what Shang would consider to be pretty potent wine.
“Were you worried about me, Captain?” Ping asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s teasing - he’s almost painfully earnest, actually.
“Yes,” Shang admits. “I didn’t want to clean up whatever prank those miscreants were going to pull once you were drunk.”
Ping laughs. It’s a surprisingly nice sound. “Well, thank you, Captain,” he says. “Next time you should just bet on me, though.”
Shang snorts. “I’m not supposed to bet on my soldiers. It would cause bad feeling - make it look like I favor one of you over another.”
Ping nods. “Oh, that makes sense. Then you’ve just got to wait until we meet up with another company, so you can bet on me against them.”
Shang snorts. “Maybe I will,” he says, stopping in front of the barracks and looking down at Ping in the moonlight.
“Thanks for looking out for me, Captain,” Ping says quietly. His eyes are big and dark, and he’s just slightly flushed and disheveled, and Shang -
Shang claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t get yourself into a situation you can’t handle, soldier,” he says gruffly, and turns away.
Betting on soldiers would be bad enough. Doing anything else -
No. His father warned him about favoritism.
Even if Ping does keep proving to be so much more than he first appears.