Is my (24F) friend (26M) of 8 years being serious with flirting?

So we have been friends for very long and been close and value each other a lot and are just too comfortable with each other,

We text almost daily although we get to hang out rarely,

Anyways, we often flirt platonically and have lot of such inside jokes about being perfect for each other etc and it’s purely jokes, like we don’t want a relationship and he has explicitly mentioned the same too & he knows that I don’t want a relationship in life too,

So fast forward, I sometimes feel pushed into acting acting according to these joke scenarios but I never give it much thought & recently he’s started joking very “intensely” like he said “I’m saving all of me for you and none else can have me” and I felt cringe and kinda uneasy, was followed by other such jokes, I tried subtly asking if he meant it for real & he just did not answer clearly, changed the topic.

I am really having a hard time understanding him & he is important that’s the only reason all this matters, could he not be joking at all & be serious about it? And what am I supposed to do in this case I don’t want to hurt him or face an awkward convo.

tl;dr : I suspect my friend is not actually joking when he talks about us being together and I don’t know how to address it