You're warm this time.

He spent five years of his life cradling your corpse for a semblance of comfort, so he wasn't used to this yet. He was used to you just gradually warming up with his body heat but you having none of your own... But now, when you're alive and he's holding you close with the sound of your heartbeat, he's inclined to believe he's in heaven.

And you wanted it too. That felt bizzare to him. After so long of you thinking that all bad things around you were his doing, you chose him. He had spent so song needing someone to reach their hand out first that he remembered actually hesitating when you reached for him. But he had you now and he certainly didn't regret it.

Even if this was the first few months of a relationship, he relt enjoyed it too. Even if you seemed to fluster at any affection, the fact that you initiated sometimes just twisted his heart in pleasurable knots.

He'd held you a few times now. He loved it. It was everything he ever wanted. Sometimes he would practically smother you in his form like he was hiding you from the world beneath his large, black robes; other times he would lay his head in your lap as you put your hands in his hair, and sometimes he'd be the one being embraced. The latter was his favourite when he got it. He would feel like he would when he was a child, curled up in his mother's arms. His mother. Adoptive... mother. May she rest in peace.

"Shizun..."

He mumbles, eyes fluttering shut. Now, he had your head stuffed under your chin and his arms tight around you to the point you almost ached with it. His breathing was slow and sometimes he'd draw a circle on the fabric of your robes against your back.

It was a habit he gained from holding a corpse every night, the best way to cuddle without the other person participating. But he always thought the same thing when he did it now, that this was just so much better.

"Shizun said that he would always pick me. That I will always be Shizun's first choice. Is that true?"