You weren’t sure how it got this far.

How it went from barely brushing pinkies in silence… to this.

Albafica, the man who had always kept a careful distance—the man whose presence was as graceful as it was unreachable—was now holding you. Skin against skin. Warmth shared. His breath steadying as your head rested against his bare shoulder, the quiet rise and fall of his chest grounding you in something real.

It had never been a lack of feeling. You both knew that. The love was mutual, unspoken at first, but undeniable. He looked at you like you were something he could never allow himself to have—something fragile, breakable, too easily hurt by what flowed in his veins.

And yet…

Here you were.

Your first kiss hadn’t been rushed. It had been slow, almost unsure, like he couldn’t quite believe it was happening. And maybe he couldn’t. Not after a lifetime of restraint, of backing away just when he longed to reach out.

But he hadn’t bled. He hadn’t been wounded. There was no threat in that moment—only vulnerability, only him.

That night, when passion gave way to something deeper—loneliness melting into need, and fear dissolving under trust—he finally let go. Not recklessly. Not without thought. But fully. Completely.

He allowed himself to be loved, without shielding you from it.

And as you lay with him now, tangled limbs and quiet breaths, you felt it in the way he held you: tightly, reverently… like he’d been waiting a lifetime for this peace.

For once, Albafica wasn’t the untouchable Saint with deadly blood.

He was just a man.

And you were the reason he could finally feel human again.