Roommates & Soulmates

Ch197: Simon's Horizen

The sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn came out - and despite his unemployment - Simon couldn't resist buying it. The game was called Horizon Forbidden West, and followed Aloy as she worked to rebuild Gaia and restore the terraforming system currently sustaining earth's environment. So far Simon was having a lot of fun with it. He was currently working on a quest to build a diving mask so Aloy could go underwater without needing to come up for air.

Even with his wedding fast approaching, Simon found he had quite a lot of free time to kill, and a new video game was the perfect way to do that. Apart from wedding stuff and his new game, Simon had also been helping Maia and Jordan pack up their stuff. They'd found a small starter apartment close to Maia's work. It was farther from the school, but on a bus route so Jordan wasn't worried about getting to classes on time.

In some ways Simon would be sad to see them go, but he was also looking forward to being roommate free for the first time in his adult life. Simon was determined to keep in touch with them. More than once he'd invited Jordan over so they could play the new Horizon game together. He remembered how much fun they'd had with the first game. It was still great hanging out with them, but even putting in the effort to stay in touch wasn't the same as living with his friends. It felt a bit like entering a new stage of his life. Marriage to the woman he loved meant leaving roommates behind.

The wedding was so close that Simon had decided to take a break from job hunting until after his wedding. No one wanted to hire a guy who needed two weeks off right away, and Izzy would never forgive him if he had to work through their honeymoon. She'd demand he quit which pretty much defeated the purpose of getting a job. It seemed to Simon that all those who marry Lightwood's were destined to be unemployed for months before their wedding. Izzy and Alec were just so rarely concerned with money that they'd rather have unemployed fiance's than time conflicts.

The more Simon saw Izzy working on planning their wedding the more he was glad they didn't elope. She really hadn't wanted to, no matter what she'd said after Simon had proposed. Simon had been consulted on wedding details a few times, but usually she already knew what she wanted and was only asking him because she felt bad for cutting him out of something else. Simon didn't mind. The details of his wedding didn't worry him so long as he was married to Isabelle Lightwood by the end of it. He had, vetoed her outdoor wedding idea. It always rained in May, and Simon did not want to take any unplanned showers while he said his vows. Izzy had compromised by picking a hotel with nice gardens so that if the weather decided to be sunny they could at least get outdoor pictures.

Whenever he and Izzy disagreed, there seemed to always be a compromise that could solve it. However, there was one topic where compromise didn't work, and what concerned Simon was that they hadn't talked about it yet. It was starting to worry him, especially with everything that he'd seen Clary and Jace go through.

They were about to get married and yet they'd never really talked about what they wanted that marriage to look like, what they wanted their future to look like. Simon had started to feel like the unspoken question hovered unsaid in every conversation. He was a little scared to ask, but he knew it was better to ask now than after the wedding.

Simon looked across the room. She was standing right there. He could just ask now, but then the anxiety rose up again. What if they didn't agree on the answer? Oh this was so stupid! It wasn't like they wouldn't find out eventually!

"We need to talk!" Simon blurted out suddenly.

"I don't like the sound of that," Izzy said, turning around. She'd been sitting at the table looking over bridal magazines, but at Simon's words she dropped what she was doing and walked over to him.

"I didn't mean for it to sound... well like that," Simon mumbled. "I just... I mean we are getting married and there are some things we haven't talked about, and I wouldn't want to get married having not talked about them."