Alex/Gina – Alpha theme set

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#01 – Comfort

He's never had to deal with losing a patient before, let alone one as close to family as Martha; through waves of pain and guilt, he's glad that she's here to squeeze his hand and transmit mute sympathy with wide golden-brown eyes and tear-wet lashes.

#02 – Kiss

They both whisper their own private apologies to Martha even as they give themselves up to the sensation of one another's lips and breath, gentle and tentative and meltingly sweet, because it seems somehow too soon, even if the kindly old lady that loved them both like her own children predicted this before either of them could catch up.

#03 – Soft

He's known since hiring her full-time that she was very good at her job, but when he gets that terrible flu and becomes her patient instead of her boss for the first time, he appreciates just how perfect she is as a nurse, right down to her voice, low and soft and soothing.

#04 – Pain

She tries to be dignified and grown-up in front of him, but still closes her eyes tightly and flinches a bit when he gives her a shot, because she doesn't even believe her own words when she says they don't hurt that much.

#05 – Potatoes

He knows that it was a difficult recipe, so even though he doesn't approve of overdoing the carbs, he gladly accepts a generous dish of those creamy scalloped potatoes she made because Dia loves them and needs to put on some weight anyway, and feels that her little flush of pride is more than enough to make up for the inevitable indigestion.

#06 – Rain

She has a new favourite way of waking him up on the rainy afternoons that leave him drowsy, and employs it delightedly at the first sign of a drizzle, wrapping both arms loosely around him from behind and nibbling softly at his earlobe until his hand comes up to tighten in her hair and his moan trembles through her where she's pressed to him.

#07 – Chocolate

When Dia has to ask her the same question three times before she absorbs it, she teases her best friend about daydreaming about dark chocolate-brown eyes, and they spend the rest of the afternoon giggling and trading flowery descriptors for Alex and Kurt.

#08 – Happiness

For a girl who's spent her life living through the happiness of making others happy, the overwhelming rush of joy when he pulled her close and murmured will you please into her hair and then held out the Blue Feather between them was nearly terrifying.

#09 – Telephone

He's glad she's working on becoming more outgoing and personable, but he finds it hard to remember that when he finds her chatting pleasantly with the new farmer, Graham, scheduling an appointment by phone, because he recalls how closely the boy watched her when he came by to introduce himself.

#10 – Ears

"If we ever have a baby," she declares sleepily, running one hand over his cheek, "I hope he has your ears."

#11 – Name

The schooling she worked hard enough at to finish in half the time taught her the names for every part a person could have and everything that could go wrong with them, but she still has a hard time coming up with a name for the sensation that chokes her with something like tears when he looks at her like that, desire and adoration and love mingled.

#12 – Sensual

He knows it's neither the time nor the place, but once he has his nurse stripped for a routine check-up, the velvetsoft of her skin is irresistible, and her soft moans as his hands trail up and down slender pale thighs urge him on.

#13 – Death

They both learned about death very young, him because his parents wanted a doctor in the family and made death as terrifying as they could to spur a little boy to do something to fight it, and her because someone had to explain to Dia, three years old and alarmed, why her kitty wasn't running around and playing anymore.

#14 – Sex

Even though she protested frantically at the time, aching for his touch and tossing and turning all night in her little cot in the Sanitarium, unaware that he was next door in the same state, she's glad now that he insisted they wait until their wedding night.

#15 – Touch

It started out as dancing, but as soon as her hand found his shoulder and his hand found her waist, they moved closer together until they were just standing-up-cuddling, as Katie observed with a giggle.

#16 – Weakness

Well, everyone has a weakness, he reflects, giving up in defeat and leaving a pile of unfinished work until the morning because those gentle, sweet, pleading eyes had begged him to please get some rest.

#17 – Tears

Looking up in alarm when warm teardrops land at her cheek, she hurriedly turns off the movie, and gives him a comforting hug.

#18 – Speed

"I had the proper inspiration," he grins, running one hand lightly over the curve of her hip and following the same path with his lips when she asks, startled, how on earth he got up here so fast.

#19 – Wind

When he sneaks up on her while she's deep in thought and tickles her sides relentlessly until they're both sprawled out on the ground, breathless, the names she calls him are lost in the strong gusts of wind rushing in from the ocean, and it's just as well, because they really weren't very nice.

#20 – Freedom

She doesn't really have much use for the concept of freedom, despite the trip she would have liked to take to the city for a garden fair, impossible because people here need her, because, she thinks, looking from Dia, seated on the cot for her check-up, to Alex, supervising his nurse from the corner, there are some things that are better

#21 – Life

"I can't believe you thought you'd be an annoyance," he laughs, very gently and kindly when she blushingly admits an old insecurity; "I can't imagine my life without you – I hardly want to."

#22 – Jealousy

In addition to being relentlessly healthy, Graham has been busy trying to get his farm established, so he hasn't come around since that first time; now that things have slowed down and he has time to get sick, Alex can feel himself starting to dislike the boy again – or at least, the way he always comes with a gift and an admiring smile for the nurse.

#23 – Hands

She can see that something's wrong, so she grabs hold of the back of his lab coat as he tries to brush past her, and hangs on tight until he tells her what's wrong.

#24 – Taste

"Well, I suppose I have to admire his good taste in women," Alex laughs a long time later, after she's assured him earnestly that he's the most important – the only important – man in her life.

#25 – Devotion

They both had some reservations about working together now that they're married, but it seems that their devotion, both to their jobs and to each other, has only grown.

#26 – Forever

It seems that no amount of time they have to just be together is too much, and when he'll let her snuggle up like this and just listen to his breathing, she could happily stay this way forever.

#27 – Blood

He shook his head slightly over her unconscious form, reflecting that he might have to retract his no-interruptions-when-there's-a-patient policy when she somehow contrived to put a deep gash in her arm with a shard of broken glass, and went calmly about cleaning and bandaging the cut, even as she began to stumble from blood loss.

#28 – Sickness

It's heartwarming to see Dia so anxious to take care of her friend through the worst of the inevitable flu at the tail-end of the season, but he's a little disappointed, too, because he was looking forward to taking care of Gina himself.

#29 – Melody

"I'm really not very good," she says quietly when he asks her to repeat the soothing little song he found her humming, but he's just heard enough to know better.

#30 – Star

"Why didn't you try out for a role in the play?" he asks, confused, when she announces, flushed and triumphant, that Dia is going to be starring and she's going to be doing costumes, and now she's creeping off, a little hurt that he doesn't think much of supporting roles, because if he hasn't noticed, that's sort of what she does.

#31 – Home

After a hectic week-long visit to the city he lived in before Flowerbud Village, he asks what she thought, and she smiles and says that the city is very beautiful, and now she understands why he's so forgetful, used to trying to do everything at once, but she doesn't understand how he could ever call it home.

#32 – Confusion

It's bewildering, to say the least, when Gina spends a week veering wildly between ecstatically happy and sobbing in Dia's arms while the dark-haired girl's green eyes flash as she calls him a brute for upsetting her best friend, but he has his own delighted suspicions on what's doing it.

#33 – Fear

"I-I'm just afraid that I won't be any good as a mother," he hears her confess softly to Dia, and feels an overwhelming rush of affection towards his sister-in-law when she cuddles Gina close and laughs softly that she's been a wonderful mother to her for the last ten years, even when they were both little girls, three and three-and-a-half.

#34 – Thunder/Lightning

It's one of the only times he's ever spoken so sharply to her, when he finds her trying to sneak out during a terrible thunderstorm to bring in the laundry she hung out to dry.

#35 – Bonds

He's finally found a practical purpose for all those ribbons she always wears in her hair, and as she gazes up at him, apprehensive and excited, wrists tightly bound together and to the bedpost, he thanks God, the Harvest Goddess, whoever, for creative hair-dressing.

#36 – Market

She's the quietest person he's ever met who's addicted to haggling, and he's the friendliest person she's ever met who hates it.

#37 – Technology

She shakes her head and giggles softly when she finds him, on his day off, hunched over a little hand-held gaming device and deeply engrossed in Trauma Center: Under the Knife.

#38 – Gift

When she asks him what he might like for his birthday, he tells her with a dopey smile that she's already giving him a child, and she sighs and tells him gently that he's not much help.

#39 – Smile

"She'll have your smile," he says with a dreamy smile of his own, running his fingers lightly over her swelling tummy, because he's as certain that the baby is a girl as he is of his own name.

#40 – Innocence

She likes to playfully reminisce about back when she was an innocent, and he likes to laugh that she couldn't be anything else if she tried.

#41 – Completion

"Alex…we're not finished the paperwork yet," she protests, even as she arches into his hands and closes her own over them to urge him farther up under her blouse.

#42 – Clouds

"Sweetheart, you promised that you would call me if you needed help!" he says severely, lifting her easily off the stool despite the baby due any day, before finishing the job of covering the nursery walls with pretty blue paper covered in fluffy white clouds himself.

#43 – Sky

As it happens, she really shouldn't have come to the Flower Festival, because the contractions come swiftly, and Alex ends up delivering the baby a few meters out of the Square, with the help of an Ellen too excited to be any use; when she finally collapses back into Lyla's arms, she gazes sleepily up at the clear blue spring sky, and dreamily suggests a name for their daughter.

#44 – Heaven

Martha told her there would be these moments, with Alex and Gina and little Skye all cuddled together in the same armchair, when she would like to live forever, because Heaven can't possibly hold anything half this wonderful.

#45 – Hell

Martha told her there would be these moments, too, stumbling exhaustedly out of bed in the middle of the night, just after finally dropping off to sleep, for another feeding, and waking up feeling as though you hadn't gotten more than an hour; but she still can't agree with Eve that it's Hell, because she would go through anything for Skye, and this is wonderful in its own way.

#46 – Sun

Even if she wasn't too shy to leave the house in it, she's fairly certain that Alex wouldn't let her wear that bikini one of the girls brought her back from the city, because they both know she sunburns terribly, so she just models it for him in their bedroom.

#47 – Moon

Skye, four years old and outraged, can't understand why Daddy laughed so hard and Mommy looked like she wanted to, when she stormed back into the house after a play-date with Auntie Dia and Uncle Kurt's son, shouting furiously, Will just showed me his bum!

#48 – Waves

He's delighted that Skye has her mother's beautiful honey-brown eyes, full of warmth and gentle kindness, but wishes that she might have had her mother's hair, too, falling thick in pale, shimmering blue waves like the ocean on a calm day.

#49 – Hair

She's delighted that Skye has her father's hair, fine and silken-soft and night-dark, but thinks wistfully that Alex's eyes, soft grey and sparkling with humour, would have made her even more beautiful.

#50 – Supernova

When Skye and Will ask solemnly if they can borrow some of Mommy's glass mixing bowls because they're playing Spaceman and they need helmets, Alex casts a helpless look at Gina, who returns it with an impish little smile of you can take this one, Daddy.

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End Notes: Yes, I'm back to these two. I can't help it! They're so darn cute! XD No relation to the first one. Different kid, and a different proposal scene, because I like doing those.