Harvest Moon; Doctor/Elli; Gamma theme set
Fandom: Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town
Pairing: Doctor/Elli
Theme Set: Gamma
Rating: PG-13ish
---------------------------------------------
#01 - Ring
His very first impression of her is a solemn, wide-eyed little girl of four, thanking Dr. Trent's aloof fifteen-year old grandson from the mysterious, faraway land known to her only as The City, very primly for the lovely present, a plastic ring with a gigantic gem-shaped candy; and although at the time, he was irritated by the little brown-eyed shadow he somehow adopted for his entire visit, he's always looked back fondly on that week.
#02 - Hero
She, of course, has little memory of it, only has her grandmother's stories and fond laughter to go by, but when she meets him again, history repeats itself, and she readopts an old hero.
#03 - Memory
He knows as soon as he's said it, that a remark to a seventeen-year old girl he last saw when she was four that you've grown so much is idiotic, but it was a shock, being confronted with a sweet, lovely young woman with a welcoming smile and beautiful eyes where he had been expecting a shy little girl with a sticky mouth from strawberry jam and candy.
#04 - Box
It was a pretty pitiful sight, the two of them trying to lift all those heavy boxes to get him moved into the Clinic; but it did give them the very first thing they would ever laugh over together.
#05 - Run
Duke and Manna shake their heads and exchange knowing little smiles when a little brown-and-blue streak comes pelting down the road, shouting pleadingly at them don't close up yet, because she wants to buy the new doctor a bottle of wine to relax after a hard day of moving in.
#06 - Hurricane
“There's no way I'm letting you leave in this weather,” he tells her quietly, and he knows it was the right thing to do, but it doesn't stop him from spending an agonizing night thinking about the girl on the other side of the wall, beautiful and vulnerable in sleep, clad only in one of his dress shirts.
#07 - Wings
It was the day that he took the tiny injured baby bird from little May and put its wing in a splint, before giving the dark-haired child very specific instructions on how to look after it from now on, that she started thinking, smiling dreamily and adoringly, that he'll be a good father someday.
#08 - Cold
It just figures, she thinks miserably, that the pretty, friendly, cheerful blonde who's going to be running the farm came to visit them the very same day she woke up with a terrible cold, unable to do anything but sniffle, sneeze, and sigh, so that she ended up listening wistfully at her desk as the doctor and the new girl laughed together over something.
#09 - Red
“Wow,” he finally manages, stunned into complete honesty by the little sleeveless sun-dress that is her attempt at reminding him that an attractive girl does exist alongside a faithful nurse; “You should wear red more often.”
#10 - Drink
She's been teasing him all night about the bottle of wine he's steadily emptying, so when he catches her tipping a little splash of Bailey's into a glass of milk, he smiles wickedly and prepares for a little payback.
#11 - Midnight
It's not the first time that both tutor and student have become so immersed in their studies that the striking of the clock at midnight catches them off-guard, but somehow, when she scurries away and returns in a nightgown and robe, it seems like something very significant has just changed.
#12 - Temptation
And when he glances over at her as the clock strikes one, to find her cuddling her textbook and dozing peacefully away, it's harder than it should be to leave immediately after he's carried her to her own bed and pulled the covers up over her.
#13 - View
“So, what are we looking for today: berries, herbs, or leaves?” she asks eagerly, skipping along next to him the first time he takes her for one of his rambles in the mountains, and blinks in surprise when he smiles and replies, “The view.”
#14 - Music
She needs to practice her flute for the Music Festival, of course, which means that he's heard her play that song about two dozen times in the last three days; but somehow, when he finds her singing it, sweetly and gently and quietly, as she brushes her hair, he feels like he doesn't mind hearing it again.
#15 - Silk
“I thought they were really nice,” she tells her grandmother, much wounded, when a present of beautiful deep green silk boxers receives a less than enthusiastic reaction from him - he barely even thanked her before turning red and running away - and Ellen turns red, too, with suppressed laughter.
#16 - Cover
“This hardly covers enough to be decent!” Elli exclaims, scandalized, looking at her own shape in the mirror, clad in a decidedly brief little yellow two-piece bathing suit intended to catch her boss's attention, and both Popuri and Karen grin and tell her that that's the point, El.
#17 - Promise
“Please know that you can always trust me; I will never try to take things farther than you're ready for,” he tells her quietly, smoothing down her skirt and pulling the zip back up, even though his voice is a little rough with desire and she can feel something pressing into her hip.
#18 - Dream
Sometimes she's a little afraid that he might hear her if she starts talking in her sleep - especially if she's having one of those dreams.
#19 - Candle
“You have no sense of atmosphere,” she tells him sadly when he finds her reading by the light of a candle and scolds her that she's going to destroy her eyes that way.
#20 - Talent
From the day she found out that he won an award for being the best ukulele player in his third-grade music class, she's been teasing him about it, asking with big, solemn eyes if she can wear a coconut bra and a hula skirt to work now.
#21 - Silence
And when he found out that she was the first one disqualified in a Sitting Still and Being Quiet contest in kindergarten, he didn't even have to say anything to make her blush and hide behind the snuggly quilt he draped around her when he found her shivering.
#22 - Journey
Despite her greatest efforts to remain calm and sophisticated throughout the plane ride, he could tell easily that she had probably never been farther from home than Flowerbud City before, when she squealed like an excited child on take-off.
#23 - Fire
"Alright, but if we all die painfully in a fire, my ghost will blame yours," the doctor said in the tone of one washing his hands of it, when she announced cheerfully that Karen was coming over to help her make a big batch of toffee tonight.
#24 - Strength
He thinks, with a nod of satisfaction, that after carrying her upstairs and throwing her down on the bed, she'll stop teasing him about being a weakling; to his chagrin, it has the opposite effect.
#25 - Mask
“I have to be honest, Elli,” he tells her very solemnly, choking back a laugh with much difficulty, as she whirls into the room to model her costume for Popuri's party; “You're a little too cute to be the Phantom of the Opera.”
#26 - Ice
She thought it was kind of strange that, when he looked at her intently and intensely, and slowly stammered out the question he's been waiting to ask and she's been waiting to hear, that her cheeks were blushing hotly, but her hands were like ice.
#27 - Fall
It's not the best moment for either of them, when she gives a horrified shriek just as the window ledge gives way beneath his foot, and it seems to take him such a long time to hit the ground, but it seems even longer before he sits up and announces thoughtfully that he thinks he might have Gotz to fix the shingles next time.
#28 - Forgotten
He's a brilliant doctor, but as she discovers during the weeks it takes a broken ankle and a badly sprained arm to heal to her satisfaction, he's completely forgotten how to be an agreeable patient, and by the end of the first week, she has to stop herself from throwing something at him.
#29 - Dance
He feels terrible about the grief he's given her when she was only trying to help, so at Gray and Mary's wedding, he asks her to dance and keeps her on the floor long after his ankle has begun to ache.
#30 - Body
There are very few things in the world that can compare to waking up on a Wednesday morning while he's still asleep, feeling his arm draped over her waist, his breath stirring her hair, his skin warm and soft as a woman's against hers.
#31 - Sacred
When Carter finds Tim bending over his wife, sound asleep at her desk, brushing one hand gentle and almost reverent over her hair, eyes and smile full of wonder because it sometimes still seems too good to be true that she's his, he reflects once again that such love is as sacred as anything found in a church.
#32 - Farewells
This is the only time she's been even a little glad to say goodbye when he left for one of his conferences, and that's only because he's promised to bring her back a kitten.
#33 - World
When he comes back, after a week, they all snuggle together in a chair, Elli in Tim's lap and a purring little golden-brown creature named Jinx in Elli's lap, and he announces that the next time he gets called away for a conference, he's having Dr. Hardy to mind the Clinic for a month and taking her with him, because he wants her to be able to travel.
#34 - Formal
When she exclaims in delight over the beautiful cream and gold gown he's brought her from town for a formal dinner party tonight, before skipping dizzily around the room and humming an old-fashioned waltz, he hides a smile and admits to himself that his Elli will never be the most sophisticated woman in the world.
#35 - Fever
But much later, when their host's two-year old son creeps downstairs, flushed and miserable and she hurries upstairs to help, the little boy's mommy comes downstairs and tells him in an awed whisper, that little angel of yours just got Geordie to take his medicine and go back to sleep with no trouble, he thinks with an even bigger smile that there are more important things than sophistication.
#36 - Laugh
When he finds her collapsed on the floor, laughing hysterically at Jinx's antics, tangled up in a bolt of fabric she's using for a new work dress, he makes a point to bring home a puppy next time, too.
#37 - Lies
He just can't equate in his own mind the idea of a good marriage with going off the deep end every time she spends too long speaking to another man, so he smiles comfortingly and tells her don't be silly when she asks anxiously if he's angry that she stayed to lunch with Claire and her brother from the city.
#38 - Forever
It's the first time he's seen his brother since he's been married, which might explain why Scott Cuthbert arrived in Mineral Town to offer condolences at the loss of poor little Timmy's freedom, and ended up stunned at his baby-brother's enthusiastic near-gushing on how wonderfully comforting it is to know that he'll wake up next to the same girl, that admittedly cute little brunette, every morning for the rest of his life.
#39 - Overwhelmed
When she finds a little note tucked into her apron pocket somewhere between Grandma's house and the Supermarket, she thinks, turning bright red and breathless at the contents, that he just may have gotten better at this than she can handle.
#40 - Whisper
But then, she's been expecting a retaliation ever since she bid him goodbye this morning, breathing into his ear in a spicy little whisper all the fun things they can do when she gets back.
#41 - Wait
It seems like they've waited forever for this, the rapture of knowing that their little family is going to expand soon, but now that it's happening, the nearly reverent brush of his hand and his lips over her still-flat tummy, it was worth every second.
#42 - Talk
And that night, she jumps him, as usual, the second he climbs into bed, but the best part is afterwards, when they stay awake long into the night, talking over possible names, and how they'll decorate the nursery, and the best way to invest the bit of money they've already saved for education.
#43 - Search
"Keep looking, you two; it's around here somewhere," Ellen insists when Elli suggests timidly that they just buy a new cradle for their baby, instead of hunting up the one she was rocked in by Mom; Tim, oddly charmed with this sentimental bit of traditionalism, happily spends the afternoon lifting heavy boxes and searching a dusty basement.
#44 - Hope
She thought that she would get cranky and depressed when she began to really show, but instead, her hopes for the baby grow steadily as her middle does, and she gets to the point of being proud of her pregnant shape - and not only because Tim can't keep his hands off her!
#45 - Eclipse
But apparently, that just means that she's better with body-image problems than physical pain, because hope and love of her husband and child are certainly not eclipsing weariness and the desperate need for painkillers, no matter what silly hippie thing she said before about a natural birth - aren't drugs made from things in nature anyway?
#46 - Gravity
Little Noah's first experience with gravity occurs at the hands of his Uncle Stu, and it somehow strikes Elli as very funny that Noah's daddy becomes more hysterical when he hears a thud and then a wail than his mommy - but then, she's had enough experience with children to know just how resilient they are, while Tim just knows all the things that can go wrong with the human body and doesn't believe in miracles.
#47 - Highway
“You're going to find Stu?” Tim asks knowingly when a very distracted Elli glances continuously through the nursery window to the highway leading out of town, and finally carefully settles the tiny infant, by now peacefully sleeping, into his arms; “Tell him I'm not angry with him either, alright?”
#48 - Unknown
She did as he asked, found her little brother and cuddled and reassured that no one was mad at him until those big dark eyes began to sparkle again despite tearstains, but she was still glad when Tim made a point to take the boy aside and remind him that looking after a baby full-time was new both of the household's menfolk, they were bound to make mistakes, and Uncle Stu was still the first one to get a smile out of Noah.
#49 - Lock
She feels a little silly, having to stop three times during Noah's first haircut because her eyes are too blurred with sentimental tears to see properly, until she catches Tim gathering up a little lock of silken-soft dark brown hair and taping it carefully into the baby book, his own eyes looking a little wet.
#50 - Breathe
He thinks he could happily die this way, her legs tangled with his, arms around his neck, moving slowly and seductively or quickly and frantically against him, face flushed and eyes glittering with need; and it just might happen someday, because when she cries out his name like that, he feels like he's temporarily forgotten how to breathe.
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Pairing: Doctor/Elli
Theme Set: Gamma
Rating: PG-13ish
---------------------------------------------
#01 - Ring
His very first impression of her is a solemn, wide-eyed little girl of four, thanking Dr. Trent's aloof fifteen-year old grandson from the mysterious, faraway land known to her only as The City, very primly for the lovely present, a plastic ring with a gigantic gem-shaped candy; and although at the time, he was irritated by the little brown-eyed shadow he somehow adopted for his entire visit, he's always looked back fondly on that week.
#02 - Hero
She, of course, has little memory of it, only has her grandmother's stories and fond laughter to go by, but when she meets him again, history repeats itself, and she readopts an old hero.
#03 - Memory
He knows as soon as he's said it, that a remark to a seventeen-year old girl he last saw when she was four that you've grown so much is idiotic, but it was a shock, being confronted with a sweet, lovely young woman with a welcoming smile and beautiful eyes where he had been expecting a shy little girl with a sticky mouth from strawberry jam and candy.
#04 - Box
It was a pretty pitiful sight, the two of them trying to lift all those heavy boxes to get him moved into the Clinic; but it did give them the very first thing they would ever laugh over together.
#05 - Run
Duke and Manna shake their heads and exchange knowing little smiles when a little brown-and-blue streak comes pelting down the road, shouting pleadingly at them don't close up yet, because she wants to buy the new doctor a bottle of wine to relax after a hard day of moving in.
#06 - Hurricane
“There's no way I'm letting you leave in this weather,” he tells her quietly, and he knows it was the right thing to do, but it doesn't stop him from spending an agonizing night thinking about the girl on the other side of the wall, beautiful and vulnerable in sleep, clad only in one of his dress shirts.
#07 - Wings
It was the day that he took the tiny injured baby bird from little May and put its wing in a splint, before giving the dark-haired child very specific instructions on how to look after it from now on, that she started thinking, smiling dreamily and adoringly, that he'll be a good father someday.
#08 - Cold
It just figures, she thinks miserably, that the pretty, friendly, cheerful blonde who's going to be running the farm came to visit them the very same day she woke up with a terrible cold, unable to do anything but sniffle, sneeze, and sigh, so that she ended up listening wistfully at her desk as the doctor and the new girl laughed together over something.
#09 - Red
“Wow,” he finally manages, stunned into complete honesty by the little sleeveless sun-dress that is her attempt at reminding him that an attractive girl does exist alongside a faithful nurse; “You should wear red more often.”
#10 - Drink
She's been teasing him all night about the bottle of wine he's steadily emptying, so when he catches her tipping a little splash of Bailey's into a glass of milk, he smiles wickedly and prepares for a little payback.
#11 - Midnight
It's not the first time that both tutor and student have become so immersed in their studies that the striking of the clock at midnight catches them off-guard, but somehow, when she scurries away and returns in a nightgown and robe, it seems like something very significant has just changed.
#12 - Temptation
And when he glances over at her as the clock strikes one, to find her cuddling her textbook and dozing peacefully away, it's harder than it should be to leave immediately after he's carried her to her own bed and pulled the covers up over her.
#13 - View
“So, what are we looking for today: berries, herbs, or leaves?” she asks eagerly, skipping along next to him the first time he takes her for one of his rambles in the mountains, and blinks in surprise when he smiles and replies, “The view.”
#14 - Music
She needs to practice her flute for the Music Festival, of course, which means that he's heard her play that song about two dozen times in the last three days; but somehow, when he finds her singing it, sweetly and gently and quietly, as she brushes her hair, he feels like he doesn't mind hearing it again.
#15 - Silk
“I thought they were really nice,” she tells her grandmother, much wounded, when a present of beautiful deep green silk boxers receives a less than enthusiastic reaction from him - he barely even thanked her before turning red and running away - and Ellen turns red, too, with suppressed laughter.
#16 - Cover
“This hardly covers enough to be decent!” Elli exclaims, scandalized, looking at her own shape in the mirror, clad in a decidedly brief little yellow two-piece bathing suit intended to catch her boss's attention, and both Popuri and Karen grin and tell her that that's the point, El.
#17 - Promise
“Please know that you can always trust me; I will never try to take things farther than you're ready for,” he tells her quietly, smoothing down her skirt and pulling the zip back up, even though his voice is a little rough with desire and she can feel something pressing into her hip.
#18 - Dream
Sometimes she's a little afraid that he might hear her if she starts talking in her sleep - especially if she's having one of those dreams.
#19 - Candle
“You have no sense of atmosphere,” she tells him sadly when he finds her reading by the light of a candle and scolds her that she's going to destroy her eyes that way.
#20 - Talent
From the day she found out that he won an award for being the best ukulele player in his third-grade music class, she's been teasing him about it, asking with big, solemn eyes if she can wear a coconut bra and a hula skirt to work now.
#21 - Silence
And when he found out that she was the first one disqualified in a Sitting Still and Being Quiet contest in kindergarten, he didn't even have to say anything to make her blush and hide behind the snuggly quilt he draped around her when he found her shivering.
#22 - Journey
Despite her greatest efforts to remain calm and sophisticated throughout the plane ride, he could tell easily that she had probably never been farther from home than Flowerbud City before, when she squealed like an excited child on take-off.
#23 - Fire
"Alright, but if we all die painfully in a fire, my ghost will blame yours," the doctor said in the tone of one washing his hands of it, when she announced cheerfully that Karen was coming over to help her make a big batch of toffee tonight.
#24 - Strength
He thinks, with a nod of satisfaction, that after carrying her upstairs and throwing her down on the bed, she'll stop teasing him about being a weakling; to his chagrin, it has the opposite effect.
#25 - Mask
“I have to be honest, Elli,” he tells her very solemnly, choking back a laugh with much difficulty, as she whirls into the room to model her costume for Popuri's party; “You're a little too cute to be the Phantom of the Opera.”
#26 - Ice
She thought it was kind of strange that, when he looked at her intently and intensely, and slowly stammered out the question he's been waiting to ask and she's been waiting to hear, that her cheeks were blushing hotly, but her hands were like ice.
#27 - Fall
It's not the best moment for either of them, when she gives a horrified shriek just as the window ledge gives way beneath his foot, and it seems to take him such a long time to hit the ground, but it seems even longer before he sits up and announces thoughtfully that he thinks he might have Gotz to fix the shingles next time.
#28 - Forgotten
He's a brilliant doctor, but as she discovers during the weeks it takes a broken ankle and a badly sprained arm to heal to her satisfaction, he's completely forgotten how to be an agreeable patient, and by the end of the first week, she has to stop herself from throwing something at him.
#29 - Dance
He feels terrible about the grief he's given her when she was only trying to help, so at Gray and Mary's wedding, he asks her to dance and keeps her on the floor long after his ankle has begun to ache.
#30 - Body
There are very few things in the world that can compare to waking up on a Wednesday morning while he's still asleep, feeling his arm draped over her waist, his breath stirring her hair, his skin warm and soft as a woman's against hers.
#31 - Sacred
When Carter finds Tim bending over his wife, sound asleep at her desk, brushing one hand gentle and almost reverent over her hair, eyes and smile full of wonder because it sometimes still seems too good to be true that she's his, he reflects once again that such love is as sacred as anything found in a church.
#32 - Farewells
This is the only time she's been even a little glad to say goodbye when he left for one of his conferences, and that's only because he's promised to bring her back a kitten.
#33 - World
When he comes back, after a week, they all snuggle together in a chair, Elli in Tim's lap and a purring little golden-brown creature named Jinx in Elli's lap, and he announces that the next time he gets called away for a conference, he's having Dr. Hardy to mind the Clinic for a month and taking her with him, because he wants her to be able to travel.
#34 - Formal
When she exclaims in delight over the beautiful cream and gold gown he's brought her from town for a formal dinner party tonight, before skipping dizzily around the room and humming an old-fashioned waltz, he hides a smile and admits to himself that his Elli will never be the most sophisticated woman in the world.
#35 - Fever
But much later, when their host's two-year old son creeps downstairs, flushed and miserable and she hurries upstairs to help, the little boy's mommy comes downstairs and tells him in an awed whisper, that little angel of yours just got Geordie to take his medicine and go back to sleep with no trouble, he thinks with an even bigger smile that there are more important things than sophistication.
#36 - Laugh
When he finds her collapsed on the floor, laughing hysterically at Jinx's antics, tangled up in a bolt of fabric she's using for a new work dress, he makes a point to bring home a puppy next time, too.
#37 - Lies
He just can't equate in his own mind the idea of a good marriage with going off the deep end every time she spends too long speaking to another man, so he smiles comfortingly and tells her don't be silly when she asks anxiously if he's angry that she stayed to lunch with Claire and her brother from the city.
#38 - Forever
It's the first time he's seen his brother since he's been married, which might explain why Scott Cuthbert arrived in Mineral Town to offer condolences at the loss of poor little Timmy's freedom, and ended up stunned at his baby-brother's enthusiastic near-gushing on how wonderfully comforting it is to know that he'll wake up next to the same girl, that admittedly cute little brunette, every morning for the rest of his life.
#39 - Overwhelmed
When she finds a little note tucked into her apron pocket somewhere between Grandma's house and the Supermarket, she thinks, turning bright red and breathless at the contents, that he just may have gotten better at this than she can handle.
#40 - Whisper
But then, she's been expecting a retaliation ever since she bid him goodbye this morning, breathing into his ear in a spicy little whisper all the fun things they can do when she gets back.
#41 - Wait
It seems like they've waited forever for this, the rapture of knowing that their little family is going to expand soon, but now that it's happening, the nearly reverent brush of his hand and his lips over her still-flat tummy, it was worth every second.
#42 - Talk
And that night, she jumps him, as usual, the second he climbs into bed, but the best part is afterwards, when they stay awake long into the night, talking over possible names, and how they'll decorate the nursery, and the best way to invest the bit of money they've already saved for education.
#43 - Search
"Keep looking, you two; it's around here somewhere," Ellen insists when Elli suggests timidly that they just buy a new cradle for their baby, instead of hunting up the one she was rocked in by Mom; Tim, oddly charmed with this sentimental bit of traditionalism, happily spends the afternoon lifting heavy boxes and searching a dusty basement.
#44 - Hope
She thought that she would get cranky and depressed when she began to really show, but instead, her hopes for the baby grow steadily as her middle does, and she gets to the point of being proud of her pregnant shape - and not only because Tim can't keep his hands off her!
#45 - Eclipse
But apparently, that just means that she's better with body-image problems than physical pain, because hope and love of her husband and child are certainly not eclipsing weariness and the desperate need for painkillers, no matter what silly hippie thing she said before about a natural birth - aren't drugs made from things in nature anyway?
#46 - Gravity
Little Noah's first experience with gravity occurs at the hands of his Uncle Stu, and it somehow strikes Elli as very funny that Noah's daddy becomes more hysterical when he hears a thud and then a wail than his mommy - but then, she's had enough experience with children to know just how resilient they are, while Tim just knows all the things that can go wrong with the human body and doesn't believe in miracles.
#47 - Highway
“You're going to find Stu?” Tim asks knowingly when a very distracted Elli glances continuously through the nursery window to the highway leading out of town, and finally carefully settles the tiny infant, by now peacefully sleeping, into his arms; “Tell him I'm not angry with him either, alright?”
#48 - Unknown
She did as he asked, found her little brother and cuddled and reassured that no one was mad at him until those big dark eyes began to sparkle again despite tearstains, but she was still glad when Tim made a point to take the boy aside and remind him that looking after a baby full-time was new both of the household's menfolk, they were bound to make mistakes, and Uncle Stu was still the first one to get a smile out of Noah.
#49 - Lock
She feels a little silly, having to stop three times during Noah's first haircut because her eyes are too blurred with sentimental tears to see properly, until she catches Tim gathering up a little lock of silken-soft dark brown hair and taping it carefully into the baby book, his own eyes looking a little wet.
#50 - Breathe
He thinks he could happily die this way, her legs tangled with his, arms around his neck, moving slowly and seductively or quickly and frantically against him, face flushed and eyes glittering with need; and it just might happen someday, because when she cries out his name like that, he feels like he's temporarily forgotten how to breathe.
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