Oh, this is wonderful!!! I love every word. I love Ray so much...I'm just going to call him Ray, not "your" Ray, because this Ray IS Ray, the one we see in canon. I love this Stella, too. You identified a big issue for couples, one that a lot of marriages don't survive: class differences (over and above money worries). It's perfect to have Stella unaware of their finances and spending too much on credit and not really knowing it, while Ray loves her so much that he finds a way to pay her bills. And he's supporting her while she's in school...I'm sure that's just the way it was. He's got such a big heart, he's so real; I can see what a "Gold Coast girl" saw in him. But the part that really blew me away was this:
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-03-23 01:27 am (UTC)Ray had stalked over to their old roll top desk and gathered up all their bills and the checkbook and the ledger he used to write up their budget in. He dumped them on the kitchen table in front of her and said. "Fine. You think the way I handle our money is déclassé, you fucking deal with it." Then he stormed out and went to the bar, where Manny always gave him beer on tap for free ever since he'd stopped Manny from getting knifed in the gut during a robbery.
Wow...that incident points up how absurd it is for Stella ever to be ashamed of him: Ray is a Hero.