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When it came to showing affection of course all three of them have their own little quirks and ways. Perhaps it is because he grew up with wealth, but not necessarily warmth, or perhaps it was in order to spite that wealth, Yizhi was often the first and most likely to give gifts.
For Shimin, the first and most obvious gifts were of course the medicine, equipment, and the support in getting through his withdrawal. It was for Zetian’s sake. That was the story that everyone told, and it was a believable lie, especially when paired with the claim that Yizhi was an ambitious young strategist, who wanted some credit for being at the forefront of taking back Zhou province. It was even believable enough to Shimin himself. Especially at first, after the conversation he and Zetian had over their small dining table. After seeing the ways they looked at each other. Even without his glasses on, Shimin could have seen the devotion there.
It wasn’t until later, when he was feverish and shaking, Yizhi hovering over his bedside, shooing away any of the nurses that tried to come support him and diligently mopping his face, tracking his vital signs, and holding his hand, that Shimin started to wonder. A delirious haze, to be sure, but there was something so grounding in those often cold eyes, something warm , and as he found himself getting lost in that gaze, he heard Yizhi softly encourage him. “You’re going to make it through this. I’m not going to leave you,” and Yizhi touches his face with his bare palm, and Shimin thinks that even if this kills him, it would have been worth it.
He doesn’t really start to believe that that tenderness is anything but referred through Zetian though, until both boys found themselves similarly hovering over her sickbed, watching fluids and painkillers and antibiotics drip into her still form in turns. Yizhi made room for him, when he entered, and when Shimin stood there, shuffling his feet and looking like a kid in front of a plate of cookies, he gave him direction. Showed him how to gently rearrange her to prevent bed sores, tilting her head and offered him a comb to fix her hair with. Shimin’s eyes widen and lock onto Yizhi’s face, looking for a catch, for a trick, to be mocked. He finds none of it. No, Yizhi is smiling with so much radiance that Shimin wonders if he accidentally activated his flame meridians he feels so hot. His face and his chest are burning as he reaches for the comb, as his fingers brush against Yizhi’s. Together, they tend to Zetian as she rests, and turn to resting themselves.
Yizhi pulls his chair closer to Shimin’s, and asks if it’s okay. Feeling like he’s dreaming, or like he’s walking along the bottom of a lake, he agrees. Yizhi nestles himself in close, his thigh pressing against Shimin’s, and that sense of burning returns all over again. Worse still, Yizhi reaches over, placing a hand against Shimin’s elbow, and squeezing it gently. “I’m glad that you’re her partner,” he whispers, barely audible, and Shimin feels himself gasp in, and nearly choke on the air. “I’m glad I got to meet you,” Yizhi continues, his voice softer than a whisper of silk. A sense of insanity wraps around Shimin, and he wonders if somehow his fever had returned, that working the Bird in the rain and with depleted qi made him ill. He turned to look and found Yizhi so close, chin nearly leaning against his shoulder, and it took every ounce of self control not to yelp like a startled dog. He swallows, not trusting his own words, and instead shifts his arm. Yizhi seemed to read his mind, sliding fingers down his forearm until their hands touch, and tangle together, coming to rest at the top of the seam where their thighs touch. Yizhi sighs, and tilts his head until his temple rests against Shimin’s.
Then, an urgent little beeping noise, which startles Shimin so badly his chair clatters against the floor before he settles back down. Yizhi languidly looks down at his communicator to see Shimin’s monitored heart rate- 113. “Interesting,” he mutters to himself, his voice a dangerous purr. It is the most sultry sound Shimin thinks he has ever heard. He does not trust himself to say a word, and Yizhi decides to offer the gift of mercy and say no more.
After that, the gifts become smaller, more domestic. Cooking meals while Zetian and Shimin are out. Looking up Xianbei recipes and doing his best with them. Purchasing some better clothes and shoes and simply leaving them inside Shimin’s bedroom with no explanation or preamble. Of course they are from Yizhi. Who else would even bother? And besides, they all smell like fresh leaves, ink, and petrichor.
The first gift Yizhi ever gave Zetian was far more subtle. Once they had gotten past her unfiltered panicked fight response, and Yizhi had recovered from the resulting asthma attack from being hit with a stick by a half-feral frontier girl, he had offered her unfettered access to the network on his tablet. He showed her, without judgement and without malice, how it worked, how to find videos, how to adjust the text to make it a little easier to read. And when she clearly did not recognize a word, he gave her the meaning with all the patience he learned as an elder brother to his younger siblings. An elder brother who wanted to do so much better by the younger ones than was done by his elders to him.
From there, it was a natural next step to teach her more characters, more complex words. Every time she thought his patience might end, and he might lash out at her, or give up entirely, she found herself proven wrong. Each time she went to the woods to wait for him, thinking herself a fool, telling herself he’s lost interest and couldn’t possibly come back again, he would appear. As if simply to prove her wrong. As if like a spirit in his light bamboo-patterned robes. Impossibly clean and fresh, impossibly gentle.
Not all of his gifts were well-thought out, or even welcome, even in spite of his efforts. He thought that offering to marry her had been a gift, the gift of a new life, of some kind of freedom, of comfort. It was not until later, when he saw her on stream, carrying the dead body of her copilot out of the Fox, that he realized it was not a gift he had offered at all, no. Instead she had given him a gift that day. Opened eyes. A renewed sense of purpose. That moment, when she had realized “ oh shit, you really do love me” had not been the moment in which he had given her his heart, but perhaps it was the one where she realized that it was hers for the keeping.
In truth, Zetian had reflected one morning as she lazily pulled herself to wakefulness, Yizhi’s efforts to assist Shimin through withdrawal to sobriety had been a gift to both herself and to Shimin. The sound of cooking sizzles softly from the kitchen, the warm scent of dough. As she rolls herself lazily in her wheelchair out of her room, she’s just in time to see Yizhi float toward the kitchen, wrapping his arms slowly around Shimin, warm and sleepy and grateful. She can see Shimin’s ears go pink from behind, and stops where she is simply to watch the one boy fluster the other, impossibly soft lips pressed to the nape of a neck, the soft sounds of surprise and aborted words. She laughs, and both of them turn to her, Yizhi amused and Shimin sheepish.
“I have something for you both,” Yizhi says first, untangling himself from the chef to pass by Zetian, kissing the top of her head on his way back to his room.
Shimin and Zetian share a look, both shrugging at about the same time in shared ignorance. Yizhi had been allowed out the day before to pick up groceries and some other supplies. Neither of them had had any reason to suspect anything else was afoot. When he emerges again from his room he has a parcel in each hand. He passes them off before taking up the chopsticks to take over the cooking for Shimin. When Shimin’s eyes go wide and helpless, Yizhi gestures gently at the parcel.
For Shimin, a pair of books. Hand made and bound in quality leathers and paper. Prints of the same books he had with him when he was first imprisoned as a pilot, that he had sacrificed to becoming shivs. Shimin himself is frozen, awestruck, for such a long moment that Yizhi’s expression actually starts to crack a little, worried that he miscalculated and did something terribly wrong. Just when he’s on the edge of starting to apologize, Shimin places the books on the counter and grabs Yizhi by the face, kissing him soundly before pulling him into the kind of crushing hug that doubles as a chiropractic event. Yizhi melts into it, burying his face into Shimin’s shoulder and clinging to his clothes. He murmurs something encouraging that Zetian can’t quite catch.
Zetian rests her temple against her curled fingers, watching with fascination and no small amount of affection. When it becomes clear it’s going to be a minute, she idly starts to pick at her own parcel, allowing the boys to have their cuddle. Shimin’s probably crying a little, and if he looks up to see her staring he’s going to be stupid about it.
The joke is on her, though, because when she realizes what she’s opened, her gasp draws both of their attention laser focused to her. A set of hair pieces- gold plated feathers in a set of matching pins. They’re elegant and burnished and would match perfectly with the Vermillion Bird’s armor. They’re a lovely thing, but that isn’t what stopped her heart for a second. There was a slight, nearly invisible seam near where the stem connected to the pins of the feathers. Curiosity led her to press her nail against it, and to pull slightly, testing. With only a little pressure, they slide apart, revealing that the base of the pin was a sheath. Inside each pin is a blade. A thin little stiletto, razor sharp. She sliced her thumb open testing the edge of one.
“Do you like them?” Yizhi, smiling in that playfully wicked way he does when he’s pleased with himself, approaches the table where she’s set her deadly decorations. He sits next to her gracefully, taking up her hand and pressing his lips to her bleeding finger. When she pulls her hand away on instinct, a bloody fingerprint lingers, leaving the fine little lines of her unique fingertip signature. Her heart stutters at the sight of it, something both tender and vicious at once, a perfect encapsulation of Yizhi. She presses her thumb in again, smudging the fingerprint and painting his bottom lip red. A shiver travels down her spine, and she’s sure it shows in her eyes with the way Yizhi’s expression shifts.
“Did you even stop to think about how much trouble all three of us would get into if they knew I had these?” She asks, already knowing the answer but feeling the need to point it out anyway.
Yizhi’s eyes flash with the force of his rage, nearly barreling her over in it’s intensity. Shimin makes a small noise in the back of his throat, resting a hand on Zetian’s shoulder, and brushing the fingers of his other hand over a hairpin.
“I never want either of you to be unarmed and vulnerable around them ever again. A last resort, to be sure, but knowing that you have them…” He trails off, pressing a kiss to the thumb that still lingers against him. It was a risk worth taking, he doesn’t say, and Zetian finds that she absolutely agrees. After all, hiding a hairpin weapon worked so well for her last time.
The bleeding from her thumb seeps into the seam between his lips, and Yizhi’s tongue darts out unthinking to catch it before it wells out and falls. Zetian finally withdraws her hand, rushing in to kiss her own blood from his lips, a fierce and violent love filling her heart. She feels Shimin take her hand, pressing a napkin to the cut to stop the bleeding, and feels him lean around her to kiss Yizhi’s neck in a moment of opportunity. These boys would risk anything to protect her, to aid her, and there is no doubt in her heart that she would do the same for either of them.