Your friendship with Dan Heng had always been ever so slightly too comfortable. Blurring the lines between friends or more just a smidgen. Nothing too serious nor obvious. More subtle shared glances and a protectiveness that seemed to go even beyond the platonic sense of duty.

Once you'd returned to the Express, that silent intensity worsened considerably. Dan Heng had taken your experiences on Amphoreus to heart, the attachment issues and trauma caused by it making him even more fiercely protective of his family and his beloved home. And you were a (willingly) victim of this awakened possessiveness.

Be it letting him fetch jars from high places, leaning into the hand that found your lower back to guide you through busy streets, or even cuddling into his pillows with a little too much contentness. Not to mention how comfortable he seemed in himself. More content. More forgiving of his own shortcomings and more confident in who he was. That totally wasn't a freakishly attractive look on him. Not even a little.

And even now, you found yourself content in crossing the blurred border into a definite 'more than friends' area. If he were blue and you were red, you both would certainly be stained purple. Hands a deep violet that was slowly bleeding into your very being as you grasped each other.

Your favourite part of his new behaviour, was how he'd hold you desperately against him in his sleep. Your head tucked into his chest, his tail holding you in place. How he'd wake to make sure you were still there. Truly. Thank the Aeons for the strife he went through because, as terrible as it was, this newfound yearning and honesty was doing things to your lovesick heart.

"Are you alright?" Dan Heng's voice was deep and croaky, his words murmured into your hair. Having woken due to your shifting in his grasp.