Archive of Our Own

calm

Simon was her rock in the stormy ocean. Isabelle exploded like a volcano at every emotion – desire, fury, indignation – but Simon stayed calm, so calm, like a deep clear mountain lake that nothing could upset.

grease

Short and greasy – that was how Isabelle’s relationships used to be, with everyone. Lots of sex, little romance, no room for broken hearts. But with Simon it was different. Her relationship with Simon was careful, tender, the two of them moving gingerly around a gigantic heart of glass which they must keep from breaking.

champagne

The glass of golden champagne in Isabelle’s hand looked as if it belonged there, Simon thought, of course it did. The purling liquid reminded him of her, sparkling and shining like a jewel between all the bottles of ordinary wine, prickly and spirited, hard to handle and easily overdosed. But the greatest similarity between Izzy and champagne in Simon’s eyes was the prickly warmth that spread from his stomach to his fingertips and the dizzy light-headedness he felt when his lips touched either one.

offer

Originally Isabelle had intended her relationship with Simon to be like all the others, short and superficial. But the silly Downworldler had offered her so much more, love and comfort and patience, freely given without a second thought. And it was that, his unconditional and trusting display of all his heart for her to see, that caused the walls around her own heart to crumble.

chimpanzee

Before Isabelle had sometimes thought of Mundies as barely more than apes, living their lives ignorant of the world that really surrounded them. But now that she knew Simon she realized that they had their own intelligent way of looking at things, and that sometimes ignorance of one thing opens a new perspective on others.

mat

The mats on the floor of the gym in the Institute were supposed to prevent injuries when aspiring Shadowhunters practiced their fighting, but Simon and Isabelle discovered that they also helped to avoid bruises during an entirely different kind of exercise.

finger

In Isabelle’s opinion, the part of Simon that had changed most with his transformation were his fingers, for where before they had only looked long and spidery, they were now elegant and slender, the pale skin so soft and cold that his touch felt like a cool spring breeze.

button

Izzy’s red dress was reflected in the ivory buttons of Simon’s tuxedo as he walked up to her and took her arm, leading her out of the stuffy dining room and out onto the terrace of the restaurant, where there was no one but the stars to watch them dance to their own music.

oar

Their love was like a boat on the ocean, a small wooden nutshell tossed about and subject to every whim of the water around it. But sometimes, either Simon or Isabelle would seize the oars in a rush of determination and bring their boat a few feet closer to its destination.

iPod

Sometimes, when Izzy had argued with her mother again, she would visit Simon, and they would do nothing but lie in bed together and listen to music from Simon’s iPod, until her heartbeat had slowed down again and she started to feel guilty about the things she had said, which in turn was Simon’s cue to provide her with enjoyable distraction.

wagon

They were sitting in the subway on their way home from a date when Isabelle noticed a couple opposite them just holding hands and looking happy; and the woman was pregnant. That was the moment she realized that she wanted what they had, that her time of sleeping around was over and that she was now ready for a proper relationship.

arch

As different as the two of them seemed to be, a nerdy vampire and a sultry Shadowhunter, their love was like a bridge that arched over the wide chasm between them.

legs

Isabelle’s legs were a medical mystery, Simon decided. Long and slender they were, elegant and as feminine as was humanly possible, yet being a Shadowhunter’s legs they were strong enough to rival a boy’s.

doughnut

When Simon had first met her, he had expected Isabelle to be one of those girls you saw plenty of in high school – girls who spent their mornings fussing over their outfits and their lunchtime fussing over their diet. But Isabelle, to Simon’s delight, glared at everyone who even dared to whisper the word ‘salad’ in her hearing, and didn’t hesitate to tug in when Simon offered to buy her a doughnut.

mile

Sometimes Simon felt as if he was climbing a very steep mountain, with Isabelle’s love waiting at the top. Mile after mile he set one foot in front of the other, hesitant and cautious, for the slightest misstep could result in his falling all the way back down again.

interlude

Sometimes, right in the middle of a particularly enthusiastic kiss, Simon would pull away from Isabelle and look at her, just to relish the fact that he was making out with the sexiest Shadowhunter on the planet.

choir

Neither Simon nor Isabelle had very good singing voices, but they didn’t care about that when they were alone in Simon’s apartment and they’d had a couple of shots, dancing through the kitchen to whatever was on the radio at the time.

plate

The city of Alicante was entirely rebuilt, but the memories came rushing back as they passed the simple stone plate on which the names of the casualties were inscribed, the words Maxwell Joseph Lightwood drawing their eyes as if they were written in red instead of grey.

jury

Simon preferred to go out with Isabelle as opposed to staying at the Institute, for wherever he went on the sacred ground he could feel Alec’s steel blue eyes on him, judging.

coronet

Isabelle wasn’t the kind of girl who wore flowers in her hair, but when Simon decided to be romantic and placed his failed attempt at a daisy chain on her head, she smiled and spent the rest of the day wearing it as proudly as if it was a crown.

waltz

Dancing really wasn’t one of Simon’s strong points, and he preferred to stand in the corner and look awkward while Izzy and Jace drew everyone’s attention as they waltzed as if they owned the dance floor; but before long Isabelle decided that she couldn’t not dance with her lover and pulled him into the centre of the room ignoring all his flustered protests.

misnomer

Whenever he and Izzy made out Simon half expected her to cry out someone else’s name, like it always happened in the movies – after all, Isabelle did have a history of sleeping around. But it never happened, and there was nothing Simon could find that suggested Izzy was seeing anyone but him.

male

Simon didn’t really have much of what was considered masculine – no broad shoulders, no ripped abs, no beard and no hair gel. But Isabelle loved his skinny body, his tousled brown hair and his smooth baby face, and when she was with Simon she never even raised her head to look after more stereotypical specimens of his gender.

magician

There was no better way to piss off Magnus than to call him a ‘magician’, as Simon discovered one afternoon. But when those yellow cat eyes darkened and sparks began to dance around the warlock’s fingers Izzy stood up and stepped between them, efficiently wiping the smirk off Alec’s face.

pencil

Texts and chat messages were fine, but Simon, always the romantic, still insisted on writing Izzy good old-fashioned love letters, or at least love notes, scribbled with a pencil on everything he could find, be it a receipt from the supermarket or a napkin from a restaurant they had eaten in.

coat

Vampires didn’t feel cold, but Simon always took a coat anyway just so he could give it to Isabelle when she was once more shivering in one of her thin dresses. And she accepted it every time, not because she was cold but because the coat at least was still smelling of Simon’s washing agent, which was all she would ever get from a vampire.

eagle

Normally Simon was gentle, like an oversized Golden Retriever, but in a fight he reminded Izzy of an eagle, picking out his prey with sharp eyes and swooping down on it with flowing, precise motions before he dug his fangs into his enemy’s body.

spaghetti

“Nobody can ruin spaghetti,” Simon had promised her, “there’s nothing on earth you could do wrong!” But he seemed to have changed his mind as he stood by the sink trying to separate the cooking pot from the black, chewy mass of something that had once been pasta.

glasses

As a vampire he hadn’t needed his glasses, so seeing him wearing them always reminded Izzy painfully of the time they’d had together, before.

breeze

Isabelle liked to pin up her hair, or pull it back into a tight pony tail. But Simon preferred it when she let her hair down and the wind blew through it, making it dance and tumble around her shoulders like a black veil.

punishment

When Jace punished himself, he kept away from Clary. Simon didn’t have such a self-harming attitude – he only kept away from Isabelle when she was punishing him, for a wrong word, a thoughtless remark, an unintentional offense.

traffic lights

Officially engaged or not, Isabelle remained the mistress of flirts and seduction, and just one deliberate gesture from her was enough to make Simon’s face change colour faster than a set of traffic lights.