Ray/Maria – Beta theme set
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#01 – Walking
He's been watching her wander in front of the lake for about an hour now, and his stomach does flips every time she looks up to catch him staring, but he can't leave because it's dark already and he doesn't like the thought of her walking home alone; finally, just as he goes to offer, old man Terry takes her arm and marches her firmly back down the path, and Ray wonders if it's just nerves that makes him think that she looked a little disappointed.
#02 – Waltz
Just now, Maria thinks that dances are very dull, but protests hotly when Eve suggests with a sly little wink to Ellen and Katie that it might have something to do a certain Mr. Fisherman declaring months ago that he just doesn't dance.
#03 – Wishes
Ray didn't even bother going to float a wish boat this year, and he thinks it's probably a good thing, because it wouldn't be fair to any of the girls who offered to take him out of pity, if all his wishes involved a different girl.
#04 – Wonder
She's been preoccupied this week, with Father getting sick and a new shipment of books coming in, so she only has time to spend every other minute wondering, baffled, if Mr. Fisherman is okay after he ran screaming from the Library the other afternoon.
#05 – Worry
He has no such constraints on his time, so he has plenty to spend worrying and agonizing that she must think he's crazy now, until he finally has to go back to apologize.
#06 – Whimsy
She blushes guiltily when a visitor catches her in the middle of a daydream involving the noble, scruffily handsome man of the wild that her elegant gentleman prince has recently morphed into; and when she looks closer and finds her daydream echoed right in front of her, she blushes harder.
#07 - Waste/Wasteland
He shakes his head a little at the influence she has over him when they've hardly even spoken; in a season, he's gone from not caring about books at all, to thinking of a barren wasteland when he sees an empty bookshelf.
#08 - Whiskey and rum
Well, that's a hell of a thing, he thinks helplessly, his whiskey glass hovering about halfway to his mouth, when the quiet, elegant woman that's been in his thoughts all night smiles tentatively down at him, a glass of a lot of cola and a little bit of rum in her hand, and asks if this seat is taken.
#09 – War
And after they're finished with their drinks, he finally works up the nerve to asks to walk her home, and on that walk – the long, long, long way around – they discover a shared interest, and as he watches her talking excitedly about military tactics and maneuvers and weapons, he vows never to judge someone on appearances again.
#10 – Weddings
It's almost as surprising to her when she runs into him at the doctor's wedding to his pretty nurse, and they end up seated in a corner watching the other guests dance; she doesn't think she's ever seen Ray with a smile this big, and she's frankly astonished that he's having so much fun at a wedding.
#11 – Birthday
He knows it's her birthday, so when she hunts him down and begs him to take her ice fishing this afternoon, he has his doubts, but he does it anyway, because you can't really tell a girl forget it on her birthday, even if you suspect that she got hit in the head with a book and lost her marbles.
#12 – Blessing
And now the fish are practically jumping out of the little hole she helped him chip in the ice, and he thinks that Maria, in her pretty cream cashmere coat and her blue toque and scarf and mittens, cheeks pink from the cold, must be a good luck charm in addition to an instant good mood now that he can talk to her without running away.
#13 – Bias
Theodore wonders with a grin if that Ray fellow has something to do with it when his daughter, who didn't even like fish a year ago, heads out with a rod and a can of bait, determined to catch their supper tonight, because fish taste so much better fresh.
#14 – Burning
She knows that every girl is entitled to a steamy fantasy every now and again, but she still turns beet-red with embarrassment when the trout burn to charcoal because she's imagining muscled arms wrapped around her, naked chest to her back, while he demonstrates the proper way to cast a fishing line, and then gets distracted and drops searing hot kisses along her shoulders instead, hair brushing deliciously over her skin.
#15 – Breathing
When he finds her daydreaming at the front desk again, he grins and moves to startle her out of it, but then something in the quality of her rapid breathing and slightly glassy eyes turns him bright red and sends him bolting behind the nearest shelf until he gets…certain parts back under control.
#16 – Breaking
Of course, while he's backing away, he backs into the shelf instead of behind it, and now she's hurrying toward him, alarmed, and he thinks, swearing eloquently, that his nose might be broken from that book hitting him in the face when it got dislodged.
#17 – Belief
"Even if none of it's true, I don't think that believing in lies is terribly bad, especially if those who choose to are so much kinder and more responsible because of it," she tells him softly when she's finally given up on arguing the existence of the Harvest Goddess.
#18 – Balloon
After he tells her, lamenting the stupidity of the kid he was, that he used to think he could fly if he got enough helium balloons, she goes straight over to Ann and Louis's balloon stall and buys a big bunch so they can try it.
#19 – Balcony
He's never read Romeo and Juliet, but when he passes by the Mayor's house and notices Maria out on the balcony, idly dragging a brush through long, thick dark hair, slim shape clad in a deep purple dressing down and illuminated by the lights in the room behind her, the image seems achingly familiar, and he'd love to get up there to kiss her goodnight if he could climb.
#20 – Bane
"It—it's just that he's had such an interesting life, traveling all over the world and living so close to nature, and almost everything I've experienced has been through books; he must think I'm terribly dull and sheltered and spoiled," Maria sighs when Ellen and Ann and Gwen and Eve finally manage, through their combined dogged efforts, to pick out of her why she's been moping all day.
#21 – Quiet
"I like quiet girls better; girls that chatter on all the time make me tired," he says defensively when Dan asks curiously if Maria doesn't get a little boring sometimes, her nose always in a book, and none of the guys have the heart to remind Ray that he hardly ever talks to a girl, period, let alone the noisy talkative ones.
#22 – Quirks
Theodore likes to joke with him that he's the only guy who'll put up with Maria's little quirks, like spending all day immersed in a book, and it never really sits right with him, because it's not a quirk, it's just...Maria.
#23 – Question
It's taken close to a year, but he's finally got from the point of being too nervous around her to ask for a book, to marching into the library, (almost) without breaking a sweat, and asking her to join him for a walk or a drink or something; as for how long it'll be before he can ask her what he really wants to without passing out, that's anyone's guess.
#24 – Quarrel
She finds it very hard to agree with Eve and Katie when they say that arguing is the most fun part of any relationship, because right now, she's miserably afraid that Ray is never going to speak to her again.
#25 – Quitting
When she asks him timidly if he could please stop scratching things out of library books and scribbling revisions in the margin, he grins and suggests that she stop ordering books with incorrect facts on fish and fishing technique.
#26 – Jump
If it had been anyone else, he would've been annoyed, but when Maria wriggles out of her dress and dives unhesitatingly into the icy ocean water, scaring all the fish away with her splash, he's too busy staring in awe at that figure in that brief little yellow swimsuit.
#27 – Jester
After an evening with Joe and Katie and nonstop giggling and shouts of laughter, Ray and Maria go for a quiet walk together, both very thankful that the other can be serious every now and again.
#28 – Jousting
She's glad that his favourite pastime is something safe, like fishing, she decides as she comes to a passage in the book she's reading right now, in which the hero is gravely wounded in a jousting tournament and the heroine is going dutifully to pieces over it.
#29 – Jewel
"Look, can you make it or not?" Ray asks, grumpy to cover up embarrassment when Tai looks from the sizeable wad of money on the counter, to the several smooth and perfectly rounded moonstones, to the elaborate bracelet in the sketch, and grins knowingly.
#30 – Just
"Come on, Maria; don't you think beheading is a little unfair, just for an overdue book?"
#31 – Smirk
"No," she replies after a long moment to consider this, and he doesn't know whether to be intrigued or terrified by that little smile, half sweetness and half evil.
#32 – Sorrow
Maria has always dealt with grief and loss by burying them deep in her favourite book; but when the library burns to the ground in a terrible fire, and she loses haven, purpose, and centuries of Flowerbud customs and jokes and knowledge and loves all at once, she goes immediately to Ray instead, cries into his shoulder for almost an hour while he rocks her gently back and forth and wonders why he feels like crying too.
#33 – Stupidity
But he knows exactly why he feels like hunting down the idiot who decided to leave a campfire going nearby.
#34 – Serenade
As the final strains of the song come to an end on her little portable CD player, he stares at her, baffled and wondering whether or not to be hurt: "Fish Heads is the first song that comes to mind when you think of me?"
#35 – Sarcasm
Lots of people have told him about Maria's temper: slow to ignite, but far slower to burn itself out; he didn't really take it seriously, though that she'd probably be cute when she was angry since she's cute the rest of the time, but that was before his first encounter with tightened jaw, flashing eyes, and that customary quirk of irony sharpening into a very biting sarcasm.
#36 – Sordid
"It's Katie's, actually," she tells him absently, flipping a page, and fishing forgotten as soon as his eyes lit on the suggestive cover, he curls up against the base of the tree with her, pulls her half into his lap, and they spend the rest of the day reading together.
#37 – Soliloquy
"Good grief, is he still talking?" Ray mutters as she flips the page, only to reveal that the hero of the novel is still relating his grand adventure to his brother, and Maria laughs softly, because she was just wondering the same thing herself.
#38 – Sojourn
This is the first time they've been in to town together, because most days they alternate between the library or the streams and lakes of the village; and there are probably better ways they could spend it, but time with Maria at the mechanic's shop is better than no time with Maria at all.
#39 – Share
She likes grilled eggplant the best, and he likes grilled yellowtail the best; yet somehow, when they each share half of their lunch with the other, they come away feeling like it's the best meal they've had in a while, although, Eve makes sure to suggest that it might have been the something special they had for dessert.
#40 – Solitary
As different as they are, they both have that occasional near-physical need to be completely alone sometimes, and Theodore, who loves Maria more than anything else in the world, likes to joke that it's because anyone who lives with his daughter will need some time away from the smell of parchment and ink and the sound of page-flipping.
#41 – Nowhere
Sometimes it occurs to him to worry about whether or not Theodore really likes it that some aimless drifter is monopolizing all his daughter's time, and whether he should get a real job instead of spending his days fishing, but then she'll come looking for him, and he'll be able to drop everything and go with her because he has nowhere else to be, and he won't think about it again for weeks.
#42 – Neutral
She's been trying to explain to him the allure of the Mona Lisa, that her expression is so mysterious that you never know what she was thinking; and when his face finally lights up and he tells her that he understands because it's just like watching her, she blushes deeply with a very decided smile.
#43 – Nuance
Theodore thinks that it's a bit of a shame, that as soon as Ray had caught onto how to read her subtle signals that meant significant shifts in mood, Maria had learned from him how to stop being subtle.
#44 – Near
Eventually, Ray's courage catches up with the rest of him and he's able to stutter out the question he's wanted to ask for almost two years now, and amid the hectic wedding preparations, they manage to find time to cuddle together and talk about their life together after the ceremony and the reception and the honeymoon.
#45 – Natural
"You know," Maria says one morning when it's just them and the fish, her eyes wide and hopeful as she tugs gently at his shirt, "I think you'd find that you were much more in tune with the fish, and the water, and all of Nature, without these in the way..."
#46 – Horizon
Raised on Anne of Green Gables since she learned to read at four, Maria has spoken often, laughingly or wistfully according to her mood, of Anne Shirley's bend in the road, and if it was up to him, she would only find happiness and beauty (and him) around every turn.
#47 – Valiant
She's been trying not to laugh throughout all of it, but Legendary Fish always did have such a funny sound to her, and when he comes home elated and frustrated by having the damn creature on his line and losing it at the last second, she can't keep quiet anymore, and composes a ballad on the spot of the brave Sir Ray, defeated in battle by the watery beast, but never in spirit.
#48 – Virtuous
And now, several minutes later, Maria is pouting a little, because it may be quite true that good wives don't poke fun at their husband's hobbies, but good husbands don't tickle-ambush their wives, either.
#49 - Victory
Try as he might, he's never been able to beat her in a game of chess.
#50 - Defeat
But it doesn't really matter all that much, because every time she wins, she does this pleased, flushed little smile before she can remember all the things her father taught her about a poor winner, and it's cute enough to make his defeat a little less crushing.
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End Notes: Meh, I'm not terribly hapy wiht this one, but at least I have a better idea of Maria now. Which is good, as she is all kinds of cute. :D