Work Text:
"Are you alright, my love? Can you walk?"
Her soft "mm-hmm" does the strength he knows she carries no justice, deceptively sweet; it rings like dainty tinkling bells through rattling tin to his ears, a response carried by the cool afternoon breeze as if to whisper just to him, just to beckon him forth. Digging, rummaging, and falling into trash cans all looked quite similar from Dan Heng's point of view, and the dramatic flailing of his lover just moments prior, wind waving about her hands as she flailed and no doubt twisted an ankle on the rain-slick pavement and garbage muck below had sent her tumbling and him stumbling through the pile they were still idling in.
Looking over to her, with her wild hair now out from the stinking can and triumphant grin flashing bright as she waves something in the air that Dan Heng does not even question anymore (it will probably go up on a wall in her room later, he shudders internally), he hums inquisitively, pensive for a moment. Cataloguing her new injuries (that ankle is swelling fiercely already, he grumbles to himself as if her pain offends him personally- perhaps it does), he decides on his next move while she continues on about her find.
Sweeping her into his arms has her yelping with the sudden decisiveness of his moves, breaking her flowing monologue about the values of trash. In a matter of only a moment, she seemingly decides that she is quite comfortable with her new position; however, snuggling closer to his collar bones and sighing like a well-loved cat (and Dan Heng wonders if raccoons sigh too, shaking his head only briefly so as to avoid disturbing her). He carries her all the way back to the Express, back to the archives, to his room (would hers be more comfortable? maybe, but his are his and surely that must be more important when she is injured and needs someone to take care of her? regardless of knowing that she can take care of herself?).
He starts to speak when he makes it to his make-shift bed; she stops him before he can lower her to it with the look on her eyes: mischief. Humming to herself, she shifts carefully so that she can wrap her arms around his neck and shoulders, shifting her body until she is more firmly nestled in his arms. A glance in his direction, nearly face to face, preceeds her smirk. Throwing her head back in one direction, sticking her one wounded foot out as straight as she can manage in the other, and looking up at him, pleased as his brows furrow and he sighs, she only grins wider.
Dan Heng sighs yet again (he will never tire of her antics, a thousand years of missing them ensures as much).
"Alright."
Promising him through the sparkle in her eyes that she will be on her best behavior, she lets him situate her closer to where he intends to work. Data collected from their more recent outings and explorations will not wait, and he is keen to sort through it all with her by his side even though he knows she will prove to be a loving distraction.
Her insistence on gifting him a little peck of a kiss every few minutes when her attention span wears thin certainly makes the initial uploading and transcription take much longer than usual, but he cannot find it within himself to mind. Returning each kiss gratefully, the evening begins to slip away before them as the Astral Express hums in its ritualistic patterns.
She pulls him down to meet her where she is for another momentary kiss, and with his head against the pillows, Dan Heng turns and stutters on an inhale as she moves again. Catching one of her hands as it drifts, he graces it with a breeze-light peck, quick and sweet, and it makes her laugh in the way that sends fluttering patters through his heart. Open adoration dances in his eyes as he looks to her, seeking hers, and he almost shies away from the love pouring out in her own as she looks at him too.
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Hobbling in, precarious with her one ankle still swollen and sore, as Dan Heng taps at the screens and tablets in front of him, she greets him qith a kiss. Glancing up, dodging her attempted forehead kiss by meeting her lips instead, he makes a low sound in his throat. When she attempts to make herself at home somewhere nearby, he insists that she should be resting even as she rolls her eyes and groans (she lets him take care of her anyway, but she knows he lets her take care of him in return so really, it all works out) and sets to gathering a more suitable nest for her to perch and recuperate in.
Pillows and blankets and plushies are snatched from across the room, some brought from her own room long prior, some brought with her just today, ones he recognizes and ones he does not (surely new and bought on impulse with March's help) and set gently in a pile on the sizable sleeping cot he calls his own, tangling and mixing with his own blankets: a perfect nest.
She all but crows with sweet victory when she shuffles into her new pile beside his work space, and Dan Heng cannot help but chuckle at her antics. They settle in for the early evening, him at his desk and her at his side. He offers her his non-dominant hand to hold, which she takes in one of her own eagerly, and rests it on the plush of the cot where she lay, fingers entwined like gentle laces.
Giving her hand a squeeze (it says to her that he is here, that he loves her still and always), he scrolls through the next line of his report as she squeezes back (it says to him that she is here, that she loves him still and always).