Elli/Gotz – Epsilon Theme

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#01 – Motion

She begged off a tutoring session with the doctor this afternoon for a brisk walk in the mountains, so something tells her that he wouldn't be terribly happy if he could see her now, standing motionless, staring in fascination at the way the woodsman's muscles ripple beneath tanned, sweat-slick skin with each strike of his axe.

#02 – Cool

When he catches her watching him, she tries to be sophisticated and calm, but she ends up stammering like a nervous child until he assumes that she's lost and marches her back into town against her will.

#03 – Young

Women, the doctor thinks helplessly when Elli, newly twenty and sweet-natured usually, storms back into the Clinic, furious with all men because Mr. Gotz implied that she was a little girl.

#04 – Last

Nevertheless, that same Mr. Gotz finds a brightly wrapped little box of homemade thank-you candies on his doorstep the next morning, and forces himself to only have one a day so they'll last until the next time the doctor's pretty little doll of a nurse gets herself lost in the mountains.

#05 – Wrong

He's still fighting off the effects of last night's dreams, the images dancing behind his eyes of of smooth pale skin under his hands, sweet pale pink lips parted in a breathless moan and captured by his own, silky brown hair brushing his naked shoulders; so when he finds out that she just turned twenty this Spring, he mutters a string of curses and tells Jeff flatly that he must be mistaken.

#06 – Gentle

She didn't know his daughter very well, and could never imagine him as a father, until the day she fell and cut her forehead on the sharp edge of a thick wooden plank, and he wiped the blood away so gently that she cuddled up and fell asleep on him after.

#07 – One

"I've already got one of you girls showing up to pester me all the time," Gotz, who loves Karen like a bratty kid sister and laughed more this afternoon than he has for months, grumbles good-naturedly when Elli asks if she can come visit again.

#08 – Thousand

She hid it behind a smile almost instantly, but he still saw the panicked despair when he told her how much the repairs to the Clinic's waiting room would cost, so he knocked a couple thousand off the price just for her, on the condition that she leave a bowl of those homemade candies of hers lying around somewhere when he started work.

#09 – King

He laughed uproariously when she told him timidly that he reminds her of the king in the book Mary gave her: big and strong, and kind and benevolent, with a terrifying kingly wrath when he was crossed.

#10 – Learn

"I don't know if it's really something you can teach," Elli replies, forehead wrinkled in deep thought, when Gotz demands, badly shaken, who the hell taught her the death-glare that just sent Duke scurrying out of the waiting room and saved Jeff from further torment.

#11 – Blur

She's supposed to be madly in love with the doctor, like Grandma always teases her, so when her last waking thought that night, blurred around the edges with sleep, is of a bearded face and broad chest and sunbrowned muscular arms, she wonders miserably if something is wrong with her.

#12 – Wait

He'd like to just grab her and shove her back into the nearest wall and to Hell with it if someone comes into the waiting room, but he can taste the inexperience in her kiss, nervous and hesitant and a little sloppy, so he steels himself and waits until her arms tighten around his neck and her lips part willingly on his.

#13 – Change

It's a little surprising, when he dreams that night of Deanna, all tawny-brown hair and bright blue eyes and laughing sparkling beauty, and their little daughter Sylvia, instead of the cuddly brown-eyed nurse he spent the afternoon kissing and holding, but it just goes to show, sometimes people change, but most of the time they don't.

#14 – Command

For such a polite little thing, Elli sure isn't very good at obeying orders; like when he gives her a little push and tells her to go back home to your Grandma, little girl, she just glares at him and leaps back into his lap until they tumble flat out on his bed and he forgets why he'll burn in Hell if he lets his hands tug roughly at her skirts.

#15 – Hold

But when he wakes up from another dream of his wife and daughter, he's glad she's a stubborn little brat, because it's nice, finding her looking down at him, eyes wide with mute sympathy, and burying his face in her hair dampened by his own tears.

#16 – Need

She's always considered herself an expert in discerning and fullfilling the needs of others, but when he grabs her roughly, hoists her over his shoulder, and drags her back to his cabin to find out why the hell she's been avoiding him since that night, she starts to wonder if she was wrong about his need for a little time to think.

#17 – Vision

"Well, I knew you'd never buy a pair for yourself, and it's dangerous to work without them," she huffs disapprovingly when he stares, bewildered, at the safety goggles she brought him from town, and then up at her, waiting for an explanation.

#18 – Attention

He only let her help him once, because one look at her in those skimpy little shorts and white tee-shirt she dug out of the back of her closet in favour of chopping and sanding in a long dress and apron, and his attention never did make it back to work.

#19 – Soul

"But you'll see them again someday," Elli said softly, giving his hand a gentle squeeze when she finds him in a deep depression on the anniversary of his wife and daughter's death, "and I'll see Mom and Dad and Grandpa, and we'll all have a big group hug and forget to stop."

#20 – Picture

"Because you wouldn't believe me without the photos," Popuri told Rick, pouting, when he asked, half-alarmed and half-amused, why she felt the need to photograph her friend half-naked and wrapped tightly around an entirely naked village woodsman.

#21 – Fool

"You must think I'm an idiot," she moans, flushed with miserable embarrassment, when he happens upon her singing loudly and dancing crazily and gracelessly about behind his house, and he'd like to tell her that he doesn't mind, it was cute, but he's laughing too hard to form the words.

#22 – Mad

Most of the town is firmly of the opinion that Gotz must have gone suddenly and irrevocably crazy to be taking up with a little girl like this, but whenever he watches her staring dreamily into space, cheeks flushed and lips curving up into a slight smile, the doctor can't help but think wistfully that he was pretty crazy himself, to not notice the woman that his little student grew into while he wasn't looking.

#23 – Child

"You know, a lot of people might call it a little creepy that you can call me kiddo one second and take my clothes off the next," she points out delicately, and he laughs, rips at her skirt, and asks if his cute little girl would care to join him in bed.

#24 – Now

"No, you can't," he replies firmly when she asks, bright pink and breathless and staring bewilderedly at the Blue Feather he's holding, if she can have a few days to think about it; "Yes or no, I just need an answer, alright?"

#25 – Shadow

At one time, Elli would have called living in another woman's shadow like this the worst fate in the world, but maybe she's grown up a little since she really got to know him, because now she doesn't mind that he'll always love his first wife more than her, as long as she can give him some comfort to soothe the pain of losing Deanna and Sylvia.

#26 – Goodbye

But he's not quite so good at dealing with the possibility of being second-best, so when he comes for the last of her things and finds her hugging the doctor goodbye one more last time and sniffling into the front of an already teardamp labcoat, a fight fuelled by the stress and exhaustion of planning a wedding erupts right there in the Clinic.

#27 – Hide

"Don't think I won't turn you over my knee and blister your bratty little hide," he growls, heedless of the audience they're acquiring, only to feel anger turn to something else just as blazing but far more pleasant when she just glares scornfully up at him: "Threatening to beat your wife of three days, that's attractive."

#28 – Fortune

"Hey, thank Claire," he shrugs, uncomfortable but grinning as she squeals in delighted astonishment at the full extent of the renovations to his tiny mountain shack, because he promised her a full kitchen and a real bedroom, but she wasn't expecting a prettily decorated sitting room, or a bathroom with marble tile and a tub big enough for two; "Damn spendthrift kid pretty much paid for the whole thing with all the work I've been doing on that farm."

#29 – Safe

After two hours of tripping over waist-high snowdrifts and squinting through a blizzard, she's not really in the mood to be yelled at for her recklessness; but when she stumbled snow-covered and freezing through the door to see that sick, livid look of despairing panic in his eyes, she didn't even bother to protest her innocence and just snuggled up too leech some body heat.

#30 – Ghost

It seemed like a good idea at the time, telling her about all the spooks that wander Mother's Hill at night and enjoying the effects of an even cuddlier than usual little brunette hiding against him at the slightest sound, but that was before she and Mary and Karen decided to camp out and go on a ghost hunt.

#31 – Book

"Why don't you two put down that book, and I'll show you some of those critters first-hand?" he offered with a grunt of a laugh when he found Elli reading to Stu from one of Basil's books.

#32 – Eye

The wooden spoon to the knuckles was hardly necessary; Stu and Gotz were already in the process of slinking out of the kitchen right from the Look that Elli shot them when she caught them trying to sneak some of the beautiful citrus cream icing from Grandma's birthday cake.

#33 – Never

"Well, maybe I just needed to meet the right big, hairy muscle-man," Elli giggled the first time Karen shook her head helplessly that she never took Elli for the type to go for that type; "I bet he never saw himself as the type to go for cute, giggly little nurses with hyperactive little brothers."

#34 – Sing

"Give me a break," Elli pouted amidst Gotz's howls of laughter at coming in to find her swinging her beer bottle back and forth and singing one of her favourite lullabies; "I don't know any drinking songs."
#35 – Sudden

It's a really good thing that she's a nurse, she thinks, heimliching doggedly away to dislodge the stray chunk of ham that he inhaled the wrong way, thanks to her poor sense of timing in admitting blushingly that they might need to tack a nursery onto the house sometime soon.

#36 – Stop

He's always liked her legs, but she's got them hidden under those long skirts most of the time; so it's no surprise that every time she wears something a little shorter, he takes great pleasure in kissing scalding trails up her calves and up over her thighs, not always remembering to stop when he reaches her pastel cotton little-girl undies.

#37 – Time

"Men," Elli sighs mournfully when Stu declares hotly that someday he's gonna be able to drink a bottle of milk faster than Gotz, and does it again when he asks her with big, sad eyes to get a stopwatch and time him.

#38 – Wash

He never thought he'd find himself taking a bath just for the hell of it, but all it took was Elli slipping out of her dress and heading slipping into that bubbly, cinnamon-scented water, to make him decide that sure, he could use a little extra cleaning.

#39 – Torn

"Elli!" he finally barks after ten minutes of watching her deliberate between two baby blankets; "It'll keep the baby warm whether it's blue with little clouds or yellow with little balloons, so just pick one, and let's go get the kid something to sleep in with the blanket."

#40 – History

She spends the last month of the pregnancy drowned in wave after wave of nausea, so he helps her pass her hours of boredom and loneliness since the doctor ordered her off work, with stories about Deanna and Sylvia, little details and silly and tender moments that make them feel like close friends.

#41 – Power

"Fixing houses and barns is one thing," he tells her gruffly after she's finished tying Stu's badly cut hand up in a clean bandage and giving him a popsicle and a kiss on the nose to dry his tears, "but putting people back together is a gift worth having."

#42 – Bother

"You really think we need to bug the poor guy this late at night?" Gotz asks skeptically as he finds himself dragged out the door towards the Clinic, and the little brunette wracked with labour pains gives him an incredulous look and a frantic yelp of "Yes!"

#43 – God

The last time he prayed for death this fervently, it was the night of his wife and daughter's funeral, because there was nothing left to live for; since then, he knows better, and instead he's trying to bargain with God – take his life instead of the girl lying motionless, sweat-drenched, and unnaturally pale .

#44 – Wall

"Alright, back in bed, kiddo; the doctor told you to rest and let me look after both my girls," he rumbles, looming in the doorway, and she sags in defeat despite the pitiful wails coming from inside the nursery, because she could try to just bowl him over and run to little Deanna, but she suspects that she might have more luck plowing through the wall next to him.

#45 – Naked

"Um, actually, Honey, it's really just the underwear," she admits apologetically when Gotz asks hopefully, didn't she say that women who have recently given birth are supposed to roam around without any clothes on, to let everything breathe more naturally or something?

#46 – Drive

"It's never going to seem like a good time to leave Dee and go back to work," he tells her quietly when he finds her ready to ask the doctor for a few more weeks maternity leave because her baby has the sniffles and every child should get to have Mommy nearby when they're sick; "It'll just get harder the longer you wait, and I don't want to see you giving up your dreams like that."

#47 – Harm

"I'm glad to see you're finally coming for your annual check-ups," the doctor tells him briskly, and then, astonishingly, grins: "Although, I suppose it doesn't hurt that the nurse promised to kiss all the sore places better, does it?"

#48 – Precious

"Yeah, it better be nice," he grumbles, a smile twitching at his lips in spite of himself, when he returns from town with a beautiful little dress for Deanna, all pink satin and delicate white lace, and Elli squeals more even more delightedly than she did when those silly high heeled embroidered leather boots popped out of the bag; "Damn thing cost more than my suit for the wedding."

#49 – Hunger

"I can't tell if working with you full-time would help me lose weight from all the exercise, or just make me gain more," Elli sighs half-mournfully and half-contentedly, leaning back in her chair after a meal of twice as much as she usually eats when they have hamburgers.

#50 – Believe

Sometimes, she wonders wistfully how long it's going to be before he can love her as much as he loved his first wife; sometimes, he wonders, annoyed, how long it's going to be before she believes that he does, and has for ages now.

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End Notes: Hee! I love pairings like this. Grumpy Guy x Criminally Adorable Girl. Anyway, I hope this one worked out okay.