Kurt/Dia – Delta theme set

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#01 – Air

When Dia first meets the solemn, spiky-haired young woodsman apprentice on a walk she's only taking to make Gina happy, she returns flushed and smiling, and not entirely because, as her best friend declares delightedly, the fresh air's done her good.

#02 – Apples

He knows that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and if there's one thing she could use it's a miracle cure, but he fills the little basket with blueberries instead, because he heard from someone that the frail, green-eyed girl he's been thinking about all week likes them best.

#03 – Beginning

She doesn't like to worry Gina, or Martha or the doctor, but when she finds herself growing faint and a little nauseous shortly after Kurt passes with a small smile and a long, intense look, she hurries over to the Clinic, only to pout in time with Gina's outraged protest that they're not taking this seriously when Martha and the doctor exchange grins and tell her that her symptoms are perfectly normal for a girl just beginning to fall in love.

#04 – Bugs

She's already been in his thoughts and behind his eyelids when he closes his eyes for the better part of the season, but this strange, dark-haired, elfin girl at the Sanitarium wins his eternal respect, too, by picking up a cockroach more fearlessly than either he or Joe has ever been able to.

#05 – Coffee

"Let me show you how to make the tea Gina and I always drink," Dia suggests tentatively when she notices the slight shaking in Kurt's hands as he pours himself a third cup of coffee; "It's far better for you."

#06 – Dark

Most of the time, she knows that people just don't fall in love so soon, but whenever she sees his eyes, dark and intense, she finds it hard to remember.

#07 – Despair

"I think you'll be waiting a long time," she says softly when he promises to take her skiing when her health improves.

#08 – Doors

After accidentally walking in on a crudely-named make-out session that she was both delighted and painfully embarrassed to see, Gina made a pact with herself to call in Woody to build Dia her own room, complete with a door and lock.

#09 – Drink

"You were right; tastes better than coffee, too," he said gruffly with a tiny smile, passing her a cup of the tea she taught him how to make.

#10 – Duty

When Dia laments, head cradled at her best friend's knee while one slim pale hand runs through short silky-cool dark hair, that Kurt is probably only coming to see her because he feels obligated now, Gina hides a smile and comments lightly that she's never seen anyone enjoy a duty so much, then.

#11 – Earth

"We went on a world cruise once," Dia says when the idea of a trip right around the whole planet comes up, "just Mama and Papa and me; but I think I would have enjoyed it more if...someone else had been there," and Kurt smiles, thinking that she might not mean Gina.

#12 – End

"It doesn't matter anyway," she declares passionately to the girl who's trying to prod her gently into making up her first quarrel with her first real boyfriend, "because I'll be dead in a year, anyway," and now she has an angry red hand print on her cheek, and Gina's eyes are filling with furious, terrified tears.

#13 – Fall

He thought that walking in the mountains with her in Summer was the most beautiful thing ever, but each season she seems to outdo herself, and now he wishes it would stay Autumn forever.

#14 – Fire

When he tried to talk her into passing on the Fire Festival, because the nights are freezing now, and you know you catch colds easily, and I don't want to see you miserable, she argued more fiercely than he had entirely expected of her, because we can't refuse an honour like that when Theodore asked us himself, Kurt!

#15 – Flexible

Both of them have developed to be stubborn and unbending, but find themselves drawn to flexibility in others; so maybe, Dia thinks with a sweet, tiny smile as he agrees on a walk by the shore instead of in the mountains because she's craving the salt sea air and openness, they can see a little bit of it in each other, and they'll help each other develop it.

#16 – Flying

It seems sort of funny to her that he dreams of flying, when he seems so mired in reality during his waking hours.

#17 – Food

"You know that they used to call tomatoes love apples, right?" Joe grins at his big brother and the pretty girl Kurt brought home again this Tuesday when he finds them sharing a ripe, juicy, bright red tomato from that Keltie girl's farm.

#18 – Foot

He thinks there might be something wrong with him, but he just can't stop staring at those tiny little shoes, and wondering how any girl small enough to have feet that size can make such a huge difference in his life; this is about the same time that he decides to stop spouting poetry until he's had enough sleep.

#19 – Grave

She's thought about death, and become well acquainted with the thought, over her girlhood years, so when she notices Kurt talking closely with Keltie and blushing at something, the phrase some things worse than death doesn't even occur to her, even though that's how she feels.

#20 – Green

"To—to tell you the truth, I made it myself, but I had to buy the emerald from Keltie," he admits, cheeks and ears growing red as her eyes fill with tears of relief that she was wrong about the possibility of losing him; "It's kind of embarrassing that some city-girl is a better miner than me, but I really wanted an emerald, because green was made for you."

#21 – Head

Sometimes he worries that he's going to get a swelled head from all her compliments when she sees the little things he's been working on in his free time, but she just laughs and tells him that he couldn't be arrogant if he tried.

#22 – Hollow

"Do you think I'm lacking in substance and character, Kurt?" she asks gravely when she overhears someone in town – she refuses to tell him who, because she doesn't want a beating on her conscience – talking about spoiled, shallow, rich city girls.

#23 – Honor

"Why don't you tell her it's bothering you?" he suggests with a shrug in response to her halting, slightly ashamed admission that she's getting a little angry that all Gina's time seems to be for the doctor lately, and he's kind of proud of her, the strength an honor it can take to give up something for someone else's happiness, when she draws herself up to her full height, nearly glaring, and shoots back, "I will not."

#24 – Hope

He likes that their relationship is progressing slowly, he tells Woody one night when it's just the two of them because Joe is out gallivanting with Katie, because he likes to have something to hope for; Woody just snorts in reply and teases him that he'd prefer however their relationship was, as long as Dia was part of it.

#25 – Light

When they dance at her best friend's wedding to the doctor, she discovers that for such a serious, solemn person, Kurt is very light on his feet, and wonders blushingly if it's just love that makes her think he's the best dancer she's ever seen.

#26 – Lost

For the first few nights in that big Sanitarium alone following Gina's wedding, she feels terribly small and lost in a big, unfriendly world, but now that Kurt has been sneaking out to keep her company, slip into bed with her and hold her until she falls asleep and wakes up to the sunlight at her pillow, it's not so bad.

#27 – Metal

She had to beg and beg and beg before he would agree to do it, take her with him somewhere that might be dangerous, so now she's going to enjoy every second, and skips excitedly along next to him, in her brand-new jeans and sweater, on their way to the mines.

#28 – New

"You just bought that, too; sorry," he mutters when her pretty new sweater becomes woefully torn by tripping and landing on a jagged rock; she merely smiles, shakes her head, and rips his shirt off, just so they're even.

#29 – Old

On her twenty-first birthday, the day before his twenty-third, they sit together before the fire in the shop, feeling so terribly old and experienced, and when Woody finds them, he laughs and laughs.

#30 – Peace

Even though Dia values her peace and quiet above all else, and knows that children are the fastest way to bring that to a swift and crashing end, every time she hold Gina's blue-haired little son Kieran, she starts dreaming of a baby with Kurt's eyes – but her nose, of course, because someone told her once that she has the prettiest little nose.

#31 – Poison

He hardly ever gets really angry with her, but when he found her setting out poison for the mouse she had seen darting around the other day, it was one of those times.

#32 – Pretty

He's had many arguments with the other guys in town over whether or not a girl so sickly-pale and dour can be really pretty, and he always wins by virtue of pure stubbornness.

#33 – Rain

After several hours of pleading, he finally gave in and took her for that walk in the rain, partly because it's beyond his power to tell her no, and partly because he was sure she would be beautiful, laughing in the rain.

#34 – Regret

But when she came down the next day with a terrible fever, and Kurt and Gina both moved temporarily into the Sanitarium, and no one knew for a few days what was going to happen, he swore next time to hold firm despite big, pleading green eyes.

#35 – Roses

The first thing she saw the first time in a fortnight she woke up lucid enough to know the difference was a big, beautiful bouquet of roses that Kurt and Gina had spent hours on in celebration when Dia's fever had finally broken; the second thing she saw was him, and she sighed a little, because she wished he had been the first.

#36 – Secret

"C'mon, Kurt, it's Dia; she's not telling Gina all your secrets anymore than you tell me all of hers, or I tell Katie all of yours," Joe scoffs as utterly without scorn as only Joe knows how.

#37 – Snakes

She's good around bugs, he knows, but apparently she draws the line at snakes, he thinks with a tiny grin as something green and slithery darts past her dainty little shoe and she jumps immediately into his arms with a terrified shriek.

#38 – Snow

After how sick she got from a day in the rain, he was loath to do it, but even the doctor said she would be fine with a day of tobogganing, and when she came back in, she had such roses in her cheeks and sparkle in her eye that Gina told Kurt delightedly that he was a miracle-worker, and Martha begged him to marry Dia so they could see her so happy all the time.

#39 – Solid

So he did, dropped to one knee in front of Martha and Gina and Alex and little Kieran, pulled a beautiful Blue Feather from his rucksack, and put into tangible symbol the promise they had both made to each other, if only silently, almost the moment they had met.

#40 – Spring

There's so much planning to do that it's late in the Spring before the wedding finally happens, but they've been waiting for years to be husband and wife, so a few more weeks isn't a big problem.

#41 – Stable

Her new brother-in-law laments occasionally that life here is so predictable, and she agrees with a tiny, serene little smile, delighting in the safety and stability of Flowerbud Village and the people she loves most.

#42 – Strange

"Man, you two are weird," Joe laughs when he finds both of them staring, enraptured, at the tiny cradle Kurt just finished with only a little help from Woody.

#43 – Summer

She always sort of hoped that she might have a summer baby, but it only takes going through the early stages of pregnancy in heat and humidity to be very, very glad that the later stages and childbirth won't come until the weather is milder.

#44 – Taboo

Kurt and Joe come storming into the kitchen, furious and embarrassed, because Katie just told them that the thought of them kissing is the stuff of any hot-blooded girl's fantasies, and it doesn't do a lot for their moods when Dia nods gravely and agrees.

#45 – Ugly

"Consider the source, Dia," he scoffs when she and Gina come back upset from a trip to town, because a group of adolescents followed them down the street shouting jeering remarks; "Neither of you are ugly to anyone with eyes and a working brain."

#46 – War

She doesn't know why it surprises her so much to find out that he's been fighting an ongoing battle with depression as long as she has with physical illness.

#47 – Water

"Because, Kurt, my water just broke," she retorts, grinning ecstatically through impatience when he asks, crestfallen, why they have to leave their romantic hideaway on the shore already.

#48 – Welcome

The doctor and his nurse and wife watch from the doorway, beaming with almost the same delight as the young parents welcoming their tiny son into the world.

#49 – Winter

When little Mini-Joe, as he comes inevitably to be known throughout Flowerbud for taking after his namesake in personality and smile as much as in name, goes out for a walk through the gently falling snow, sandwiched securely between Mommy and Daddy, he thinks that life just doesn't get any better than this; then they stop at the Clinic and Auntie Gina brings out a blueberry pie that she made specially for Mommy, and the thinks delightedly that he was wrong before, and it just has.

#50 – Wood

She overhears Kurt telling Woody one day that he'll stop calling himself an apprentice when he gets good enough that the tools and the wood work together smoothly enough that they feel like they've become an extension of his own body, and she grins and blushes, because that's how it is when they make love: they can't imagine ever being separate again.

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End Notes: Whee! This was fun. They're cute. :)

Next will probably be Alex/Gina again, because I was on the message boards again, and Gina-bashing always makes me want to write that pairing just to piss off the more nutbar factions of Alex-fangirldom.

Alex/Gina: Because unlike his fanbrats, he's got taste. :)