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When Raphael first became human again, one of the things he was most concerned with was that all of the friends and acquaintances he had in his life - all of which were part of the Shadow World and had been for decades - would find him boring.
Some of them did, but not all of them. Not the ones that mattered. Surprisingly, among those who mattered Raphael finds himself noting one Maia Roberts.
“You’re a difficult person to track down,” Maia says, sitting down beside him. “I showed up a few times to check on you but Magnus just kept telling me you were ‘out’.”
Raphael laughs at that. “Yes, well, I think I’ve been indoors long enough to last a lifetime,” Raphael says. He’s sitting on a bench at the park, jacket off and sleeves rolled up despite the chill of the fall air around them. His face is tilted up toward the sun as he speaks, eyes closed against the light.
“Good point,” Maia admits. “You seem to be doing well,” she observes. “I mean, it’s totally weird to see you smiling for no reason, but it’s nice.”
Raphael opens his eyes and sits up properly, turning to face her as they speak. “Why were you looking for me?” He asks, his mind catching up with what she first said about him being difficult to track down. “Please tell me Lily isn’t causing issues with the werewolves already-”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Maia’s quick to stop him. “I was just… looking for you. To check-in, see how you were holding up. That’s all.”
Raphael raises an eyebrow at that.
“What? The way I see it, turning human again isn’t any different from being turned into a vampire or a werewolf. It’s a huge change. And having people around during it helps.”
She isn’t wrong. In fact, despite his initial desire to insist he’s fine, she may be right about the benefits of not isolating himself for once.
“I’m holding up just fine,” he says, but adds. “Thank you for checking, Maia. I do appreciate it. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like.”
She does. She stays much longer than he first anticipates.
----
Maia doesn’t stop after that first visit. She shows up again, and again, and again. If it were anyone else Raphael would’ve told them to go away. In fact, he does tell several others to stop bothering him, but not her. She doesn’t push the way others do, or treat him like he’s fragile now, or lesser. She treats him the same as she always did, and he appreciates that more than he can say.
It helps during the long winter months when Raphael’s forced to wear numerous layers to combat the cold he can suddenly feel, the kind that chills him to his bones. Maia invites him to the woods for fires and marshmallows and on bus rides to the beach after it snows, showing him the beauty of winter even though he now feels, and hates, the cold of it.
One night, after he falls asleep on her sofa, she asks if he wants to stay the night. He’s afraid that this is it, that this is the night it all falls apart when he admits that he isn’t interested in anything physical.
Maia stays even then, content for whatever they have forming between them to form without that expectation. That night it’s Raphael who chooses to stay as well, curled up along the length of Maia’s body under the comforter in her room, and falls asleep with someone he cares about for the first time.
---
Winter gives way to Spring, and once more it’s impossible to keep Raphael indoors. Maia slept in after a late night at the Hunter’s Moon and Raphael didn’t want to wake her, so instead he scrawled a hasty ‘Going to the park. Be back later.’ before heading out early.
Raphael is still at the park around noon when Maia finds him, this time stretched out in a patch of sunlight in the grass between the shadows of two trees.
“Are you sure you weren’t a cat in another life?” Maia jokes. “Maybe we can get Magnus to chip in and buy you one of those expensive penthouse apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows on every wall.”
Raphael shakes his head. “If I were a cat in another life, I don’t think Chairman Meow would hate me as much as he does,” he points out. When he looks over he’s surprised to see Maia spreading out a blanket next to him, still carefully in the strip of sunlight.
“What’s that?” he asks, more out of surprise than anything else.
“It’s a picnic,” Maia announces proudly, bringing a bag onto the blanket and pulling out cans of soda and sandwiches from one of Raphael’s favorite Deli’s. “I can’t just let you wither away in the sun all day, so I figured I’d bring the food to you.”
Suddenly, the warmth Raphael feels isn’t coming from the sunlight on his skin, and he feels the care behind the sentiment Maia manages to say so nonchalantly. He walks over and sits himself down beside her on the blanket, then leans in and places a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, moving slowly enough that if she wants to move away at any point she can.
He expects her to.
She doesn’t.
When he pulls away Maia catches the expression on his face and laughs lightly. “Why do you look more surprised than me right now?” she asks.
“I wasn’t sure how you’d react. It’s difficult to tell sometimes, without the physical intimacy, if someone’s feelings are romantic or platonic,” Raphael points out.
Maia hums in consideration. “Hmmm. In that case, would now be a good time to admit I’m falling in love with you, and it definitely isn’t platonically?”
Raphael smiles. “That makes two of us.”
The picnics become a frequent occurrence that spring, as does the occasional exchanging of casual kisses. They’re all he’s comfortable with, but just as Maia was more than willing to be with him without them, she’s just as willing to accept them as the extent of what Raphael wishes to do, physically. He realizes after a little while that she never kisses him first and decides to bring it up.
“You know I’m always okay with it. I wasn’t sure if you were all the time, or if it was more particular, so I figured the safest bet was to let you instigate,” Maia explains. Raphael never imagined it’d be this easy, to find someone so willing to let him set the boundaries and not question them, to be so willingly confined to them for his sake. He never imagined having someone he could be entirely himself with, and never once feel like it’s a burden.
He isn’t sure it’s possible for him to love her more than he does at that moment.
---
“Listen. I know the beach is like... a quintessential warm summer day thing, but I really don’t think you’re going to like it,” Maia insists.
Raphael rolls his eyes. “I’ve been to the beach before, Maia. I was human before I got turned.”
Maia purses her lips together. “If you insist,” she relents.
When they get there it’s particularly windy, with sand kicking up into his face every time it blows. By noon he can feel the start of what he fears may be a particularly bad sunburn, which is entirely his fault because he dozed off once or twice in the sun and didn’t turn over or put on more sunscreen.
Raphael has to admit by about 2:00 that Maia was right. He hates the beach. There’s sand everywhere, and when he went into the water to both cool off and wash off some of it that only made even more stick to him by the time he got back to his towel.
To Maia’s credit, she doesn’t say a word the entire trip back to the city. At least, not until they’re home and Raphael takes off the t-shirt he slipped on as they left, exposing what is now the fully set-in sunburn radiating off his red back.
“Oh, dear…” Maia says, literally biting down on her lip to not laugh.
Raphael sighs. “Go ahead, you can say it. You told me so.”
“I did,” Maia says, trying not to laugh. “Good thing you like being warm so much, considering the fact that you’re a human radiator now,” she adds, this time allowing the smallest chuckle to break through.
It’s true. Raphael feels as if he’s giving off more heat than could possibly be healthy, suffering the lingering, pulsing burn until Maia vanishes into the bathroom and comes back out with a bottle of aloe to soothe the worst of the burn.
There are no more beach days that summer, or any summer to come if Raphael has a say in it.
---
As the weather cools and Raphael switches shorter sleeves for scarves and jackets once more, he’s surprised to find that he isn’t dreading the upcoming months as much as he expected.
In fact, watching Maia roll over in bed and greet him with a lazy Sunday morning smile, he finds himself thinking (with the sort of sappy sentimentality he often berated Magnus for) that he has all the warmth and light he could ever need right here.