The winter wind pressed against the paper windows of the Jingshi, weaving its thin, icy fingers into the room despite the warm braziers burning low. Outside, Cloud Recesses lay under a quiet weight of fresh snow—soft enough to swallow sound, bright enough to tint the morning air silver.

Lan Zhan had been awake long before dawn.

Robes folded with geometric precision. Forehead ribbon tied with meditative steadiness. His hair was gathered neatly, not a strand out of place. He moved through the room with a stillness that belonged to early mornings—unhurried, composed, entirely at ease.

The kitchen’s small stove glowed softly. Steam curled from the pot in slow spirals: lotus-root broth simmering with ginger, pear, and goji berries. Warm, nurturing. The kind of soup that settled into the bones, convincing winter that it had no place here.

Lan Zhan stirred it gently, each movement smooth and rhythmic, the wooden ladle sliding against the pot with a soft scrape that blended into the quiet of the room.

Behind him, a rustle.

A soft huff.

Then— a muffled, pitiful whine.

Lan Zhan paused mid-stir.

Another rustle: Wei Ying shifting beneath the blankets like a fox burrowing deeper into its den. A cold breeze slipped across the bed again, tapping his skin with icy fingers.

This time the whine emerged louder, drawn-out, dramatically despairing.

Lan Zhan set the ladle down with deliberate care.

He turned.

Wei Ying was a disgruntled mountain of blankets, tugging them so high they nearly engulfed him. Only a tuft of messy black hair protruded—hair that somehow communicated complaint all by itself.

Another whine, even louder this time, as though volume alone might summon rescue.

Lan Zhan crossed the room, footsteps quiet, steady, almost floating across the polished floor. His shadow stretched over the bed before he reached it.

Wei Ying instantly whined again, as though protesting, You took too long, even though Lan Zhan had moved with near supernatural swiftness.

Lan Zhan stood beside the mattress, looking down with a face carved in calm lines—but his eyes softened, warmed, turned almost molten in the low morning light.

“…Wei Ying.” Barely sound. A vibration more than a voice.

The blankets grumbled.

Lan Zhan gently tugged them down just enough to reveal the top of Wei Ying’s head and the bridge of his nose—pink, scrunched, cold, offended by winter’s existence.

He said nothing else.

He didn’t need to.

He placed a warm palm against Wei Ying’s hair, smoothing it back, grounding him with a heat that seeped through skin and straight into agitation.

The howl of wind outside faded to irrelevance.

Wei Ying’s breathing eased under his touch, the tension unspooling from his body slowly, instinctively.

Lan Zhan stayed beside him, patient as a mountain under snowfall, his hand steady and warm, waiting for his husband to emerge at whatever pace the morning allowed.