Chapter 9: happily ever after
Summary:
It's always three months later!
Chapter Text
Three months later.
He and Alisha have decided to stay out in Vegas, for the time being.
He can't get used to thinking of her as safe, and if he can't change the past anymore, at least he can learn from it.
When Curtis, Kelly and Nikki text that they've got six more weeks community service, he wonders about warning them, about the medium.
Lola.
Seth.
The long-term health risks of carcinogenic chemicals in cigarettes.
Instead, he just blocks their numbers quietly from Alisha's phone and his own.
Alisha will probably be upset when she finds out, but the upside of having an immortal girlfriend is an inbuilt difficulty to maintain grudges.
The issue of immortality never really came up when Nathan was alive. The first times he was alive.
He dismissed all their concerns, and was so expert at being thoughtless that they all followed suit.
They never worried about the future, about whether he'd stay young, an eternal Peter Pan, while they all died around him, or worse, whether he'd age and wither, trapped in forever.
Alisha, used to a power which resembled a curse as much as a gift, didn't react quite so blithely the first time she died.
They talked about kids.
Alisha rejected the idea, until they're sure that she won't be burdening them with her eternal care, or worse, that she won't watch them grow up, marry, get wrinkles and middle-aged spread, while she stays young and beautiful, a grotesque grandmother figure.
They also talked about breaking up.
He feels guilty, although he also feels flashes of spite at her.
For manipulating him, lying to him, even if it wasn't this time, this turn.
For not loving him as he was, for making him do all of this.
For being, underneath the beauty and the damage, and after all the death and pain, so utterly ordinary, a normal girl, wanting not heroism and drama and sacrifice, but simply a normal boyfriend and a normal life.
For doing anything to get what she wanted, just like him.
When she's angry, she spits at him once that he thinks he can do anything he wants, then her face twists up and she bursts into tears.
He approaches, quietly.
'Sorry...it's not about you. I mean...it is, but...Curtis said something to me once. That I thought I could make people want me. That it didn't matter if they wanted to or not.'
He doesn't think he or Alisha ever learnt that lesson.
No one ever had the heart to teach Alisha, even Curtis, and it's far too late for Simon to regret any of his choices, to ask for more than the power, the beautiful girlfriend, the Vegas flat funded by invisible robberies, to want the love to be a choice, not an ultimatum.
They have their happily ever after. Alisha's literally.
Simon's good at this stuff, he never needed the others to help him plan, he can come up with a way out.
If all else fails, there's ecstasy, but he's careful never to mention this to Alisha.
He doesn't want that to be an option for her.
He also doesn't want her to see Nathan.
As far as she, or anyone else knows, she was always immortal.
Nathan was just...unlucky.
He was probably never meant for a long life, grandchildren and a white beard and stick.
Was probably always going to burn out early, leaving a memory all the brighter because it was short-lived.
That's the only reason Simon keeps thinking about him now, poking the memory like a tooth, testing it for wobbles.
He definitely was never serious, Simon's sure of that now.
Drunk, absolutely.
Lonely, almost certainly.
Horny, permanently.
But in love?
That part was a prank, a faked seizure, a leap out of a coffin, sincere eyes and a breathed 'You're invisible!' before the coke can strikes his head.
Simon's not sure anyone could love him, to be honest.
He and Alisha can touch now.
It's not what it was, yet.
He's not great. Still finds himself stuck in his head too long, wondering.
Is this how he did it? Did she love him more? Did he love her more? Would he have been happy, here, now?
It will get better. It has to. Practice makes perfect, and with enough practice, they'll love each other like they were supposed to, he knows it.
In the meantime, they stay.
Alisha's not worried about sunburn anymore, about wrinkles or getting fat, of her beauty fading.
She splashes by the pool, blowing kisses to Simon, lurking palely in the shade.
He smiles, catches one, squinting at the security schedule for a nearby casino. He pays their rent online for another month, and then logs in from an anonymous account.
It takes him a while to track down a girl based only on her first name and an accent, but he was always good at following people.
He sends Marnie the takings from Caesar's Palace's craps table from the last month.
He thinks he owes Nathan that, at least.
