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Chapter Text

Oh, what am I doing here?! How could I possibly think that ringing in the new year in the Pye residence could possibly portend anything but ill omens for the year to come?!

Anne Shirley-Cuthbert tried to rein in her more dramatic tendencies nowadays, being all of eighteen years old, a grown woman and well on her way to earning her BA at Redmond College, but they would get the better of her tonight. 

Anne wasn’t sure if it was too much heat from the roaring fire in the hearth, too much spirit from a night of gaily dancing, or too much hot blood coursing over her skin - from flushed pink cheeks to blush-speckled collarbones, to the current that, every now and again, ran in hot waves from the crown of her head to the ends of her toes - but whatever was overheating her now made her feel as though she would drown in the suffocating heat and never resurface. 

That is how she found herself leaving the party to sit in a dark corner of the wide and ostentatious Pye porch - trying to catch her breath and cool her nerves. 

Dancing is all well and good, and I could even stomach the way his touches linger and tingle across my skin - even through all of these stays and layers! - but why oh WHY must Gilbert Blythe insist upon looking at me in that way?! 

Just remembering the way his hand remained on her waist at the end of the last dance as he steadied her, the way he looked into her eyes as though he was searching for the answer to the last question on his most difficult term final, the way that look softened and melted into liquid desire as she held his gaze for a moment too long, and she saw… oh, what was it that she saw? It was more fluid than fire (and not at all how she would ever describe such things in her stories) - something deep and otherworldly. Something too dangerous to be investigated; much too wicked to be inviting. 

Anne felt herself go hot all over once more despite the deep chill in the air. It was the coldest New Year’s Eve that Anne had ever experienced on Prince Edward Island, but she had the sudden desire to remove the soft velvet, lace-trimmed gown she wore and go running through the frozen wood nearby, if only it would give her overheated skin some relief. 

Anne took a few deep breaths. She would stop trying to figure out what Gilbert Blythe was thinking. She would go back inside and enjoy herself. She would. 

Abruptly she heard a noise that made her stand stock-still, moving only to inch further into the shadows the house threw over her in her corner of the porch. She wasn’t sure why she felt so jumpy, only that she wanted another moment to compose herself before going back to dancing and laughing and avoiding Josie Pye’s poisonous personality. Anne’s wide, grey eyes watched intently as a shadowy figure closed the front door and strode out to the balustrade.

The figure began to take deep, slow breaths - each one filling up the large chest and elevating the broad shoulders as he drew in, then falling slowly down as the air was noisily expelled in a measured way. She could almost imagine the shadow counting to ten with each slow intake and expression of oxygen, the way she had been only moments before. 

The outline soon began to move more naturally, having apparently caught and calmed his breath. Anne would know that silhouette anywhere, but somehow realizing how instantly familiar the planes of the tall, muscled frame and tousled curly top of his profile were to her caused the uncomfortable current of heat over her skin once more, vexing her greatly. 

Would she ever be allowed a moment’s peace without Gilbert trampling all over her nerves?! 

His outline leaned forward suddenly, gripping the banister in agitation of spirit, as though some invisible foe had winded him with a blow to the abdomen. He hung his head and attempted to control his breathing once more.  

Concern washed over Anne, dousing her overheated skin more effectively than the bracing night air could ever hope to. 

However frustrated she was, Anne now realized that it was more with herself, with her body’s strange and infuriating reactions to her old chum, than with anything Gilbert had done wrong. 

She opened her mouth, not knowing what to say, but knowing that she needed to speak with him - clear up whatever was muddling her thoughts and flushing her complexion with heat when he was near. A conversation in this cold night air would help them both figure out how to get past… whatever this was. 

She jumped suddenly as a loud shout sounded from inside the Pye house, emitting a little squeak from her open mouth and reaching her arms out to catch herself on the railing behind her before she could lose her footing.  

TEN! - the unseen crowd of Avonlea friends and neighbors chorused from inside. 

Anne’s head snapped up to look at Gilbert’s shadowed outline. She couldn’t make out his face, but it was clear that it was turned in her direction. 

The countdown to a new year had begun, and Anne had just given up her hiding place in a most embarrassing fashion. Maybe this meant her terrible luck would end with the old year? Though Anne didn’t hold much hope for that - she had always had a knack for getting into scrapes - not even adulthood could change that. 

NINE! 

Anne’s stomach felt a strange (yet pleasant) swoop as she watched Gilbert’s dark silhouette straighten to a standing position. 

She had felt this queer feeling once before - on the Ferris Wheel at the County Fair the summer after she turned sixteen. She had ridden alongside Gilbert, who brought along the most enormous cloud of a new sweet she had never heard of before that day. 

EIGHT!

The lighter-than-air treat was called Cotton Candy, apparently, and Gilbert had held it between them by its white paper cone as the wheel began to spin slowly and their car ascended. At first they had used their fingers to pick it apart, delivering tiny pinches of pink candy floss into their open mouths, where it disappeared like a sweet memory on their tongues. 

On the porch Gilbert’s dark form moved, aiming his expansive shoulders toward the corner where Anne still perched, motionless in the shadows. 

SEVEN! 

Then, when they had realized the sticky mess the candy was making of them, they had laughed themselves silly licking it from the paper cone, their own fingers and lips. Afterward, Gilbert had turned to find a long wisp of spun sugar stuck to Anne’s chin, unbeknownst to the newly bearded lady, and a grin had spread mischievously across his face. 

“Gil— I—“ Anne’s voice came out of the shadows in a quiet croak. The surprise of being found lurking in the darkness caught her unprepared, unable to continue in the light, boisterous attitude of speaking she had employed inside the party. She paused to quietly clear her throat. 

SIX!

His eyes had held a wicked glint as the Ferris Wheel reached its apex. The dark glint grew more sinister yet as he leaned forward, suddenly holding her face in one of his large, warm hands, his gaze steady. 

The dark figure on the porch stilled for a moment. Anne couldn't know what hearing her calling him ‘Gil’ did to him - how the rasp in her voice tore away at his reservations and shredded his resolve. She only watched breathlessly as shadow-Gilbert then took two large steps toward her corner of porch. 

FIVE! 

Anne’s heart had nearly pounded a beat directly out of her chest, and it had nothing to do with a fear of heights. She instinctively leaned as far away from her reprehensible seat-mate as the limited space in the car would allow. His advance was undeterred, however, and he had lowered his face toward hers. 

Two more strides brought Gilbert’s ever-sharpening outline to a stop directly in front of Anne, who straightened to her full height as he approached. 

FOUR! 

He had paused then, still holding her face with his palm against her cheek and his long fingers straying past her ear and into her wind-caressed red hair, with his lips a centimeter or two from hers. The wheel had shuddered to a stop, leaving their car swaying gently, and Anne felt a delicious plummeting sensation in her abdomen. 

The dark form of Gilbert Blythe was now looming over her. Anne could not bring herself to look at his face - unable or unwilling to discover what she would find in his moonlit eyes. Instead she trained her eyes on his boots - large, black, standing just outside each of her small, slippered feet. 

THREE!

As he had held her there at the highest height either of them had ever reached before, he brought his face so close to hers, and her reaction had been to gasp out his name while he hovered there. Not his name, exactly. She was able to rasp out just one syllable. 

“Gil—“ she had breathed. 

“Anne,” the shadow-dappled lips of Gilbert didn’t rasp or whisper - he said her name quietly like it was a sigh, a prayer - as his two hands gripped her face, the rough fingertips of his ink-stained hands brushing across the soft skin of her cheek, straying onto her neck and into her hair. Anne made a small sound, almost like a hiccup, as her breath caught in her chest. 

TWO!

After the Ferris Wheel had taken them back to earth, Anne had told herself that it was in protest, that whispered, “Gil.” But the memory of his name, the only nickname he would ever willingly allow from the only lips he ever wanted to say it, to say it over and over, would keep Gilbert up for many, many sleepless nights afterward. 

“Gil, please…” Anne whispered, as she finally drew her gaze up his long, lean legs, his strong torso, stopping when her eyes met his. Her body was alive with waves of heat, stronger and more consuming than even she could have imagined. She wasn’t sure whether her pleading was whisper was asking him to stop or to never stop. She only knew that she couldn’t keep up with the wild feelings attempting to find their way out of her chest alongside her pounding heart. 

ONE!

Gilbert had leaned in suddenly and swiftly after that brief, agonizing pause at the top of the world, stuck there between heaven and earth at the height of the wheel. 

The deep, black pools of liquid fire that Anne found in Gilbert’s eyes took the words - either of protest and of good sense she had been ready to utter -  from her lips. Took the very air from her lungs. She felt as though her legs would betray her and, at any moment, she could fall and fall and fall into those eyes where she would never resurface. Instinctively her hands shot out, and she grasped Gilbert’s arms just above his elbows, hanging on with her might. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Paper party horns, shouts, and cheers sounded from inside, but they may as well have been the breeze blowing in the trees or a cricket chirping in a meadow, for all of the effect it had on the two figures on the dark landing. 

“Are you challenging me to a beard-growing contest, Miss Shirley-Cuthbert?” Gilbert had asked, his lips just above hers, his breath falling sweetly onto her mouth as their car rocked gently. And then he had swooped down and slurped up the long strand of candy straight off of the end of her chin, making a loud smack ing sound as his lips closed down on her skin. 

Then Gilbert had leaned back as far as he could in the small car, laughing as loudly and obnoxiously as anyone had ever laughed in the history of the universe - as far as Anne was concerned, at least. 

Anne of the midnight porch, who was cornered by and enveloped in the searing gaze of that same wicked boy from the fair, couldn’t quite remember the ire (nor the dressing-down and the months of tense freezing-then-thawing that followed) that she unleashed upon him in that Ferris Wheel at this exact moment. 

To her credit, she felt she was forgetting something about the story, but she knew not what. Were she pressed, she may not even remember what year or day or season it was in this moment, especially as Gilbert’s fierce, longing stare did not break or soften, as he began moving ever-closer.

As his lips approached hers just ahead of his hungry gaze, Anne’s last survival instinct caused her to take a sharp, deep breath, as though complicit with the desire in Gilbert’s eyes. As if preparing her to fall and fall and fall and fall…  

BANG!

The front door of the Pye residence cracked against the side of the house as it was thrown wide. A titter, followed shortly by a giggled-out, “Oops!” More giggles followed as two people exited the house - still bustling with life and celebration. 

Anne and Gilbert had jumped apart, both of their arms extended as if to reach out to one another, trying to steal the moment back from this icy interruption. 

Diana Barry and Jerry Baynard began walking arm in arm down the front porch steps: Diana loudly (perhaps a bit tipsily) asking Jerry where he thought Anne had gone off to; Jerry answering back in French that he didn’t care where Anne had gone unless it helped the two of them disappear together, too. More giggling, growing fainter now as they rounded the corner of the house and disappeared out of view. 

Anne felt a hot blush engulf her face and neck as her body was made aware once more of their surroundings. She couldn’t bring herself to meet Gilbert’s eyes again, but used the wake of distraction and soberingly cold air left by her beloved bosom friend’s unknowing interruption to slip around Gilbert and toward the porch steps. 

“I must go and find Diana - she will be looking for me, I’m afraid,” Anne murmured in excuse as she slipped down the stairs and out from under the spell of Gilbert Blythe. 

She paused just long enough on the bottom step to turn her torso around and look at his outline - shadow had enveloped him once more.

“Happy New Year, Gil,” she smiled. 

And then she was gone. 

Chapter Text

Anne Shirley-Cuthbert could not sleep.

By the time she had tracked down her bosom friend, Diana, and then convinced said bosom friend - who was found behind the Pye’s garden shed entangled with a certain Acadian farmhand - that it was time to head home, half of the party had cleared out. Anne’s eyes - half hopefully, half fearfully - swept over the dark, snowy grounds as she and Diana made their way, arm-in-arm, back toward the Pye’s front door. Anne didn’t spy any dark and handsome men with flame-throwing hazel eyes on their way, but she couldn’t stop herself from restlessly searching anyway.

Anne and Diana reentered the Pye house in order to say their goodbyes to their hostess (one of them gracious in the face of the backhanded compliments and leading questions of Josie Pye, the other hiccuping and leaning heavily upon her friend’s arm) while Jerry pulled the Cuthbert’s horse and sleigh around to the front of the house. Loading Diana, who began to lean on Anne more than ever on their way down the front porch steps, into the sleigh was another feat entirely, and by the time she had hopped in next to her friend, Anne felt herself extremely worn out, body and soul.

Jerry helped Anne to heft Diana’s limp, groggy weight from the sleigh when they arrived at Green Gables fifteen long minutes later. There were no candles or lanterns lit within the dear house, and, for that, Anne was extremely grateful. The last thing she needed right now was a tiresome conversation with Marilla about the night’s events (or the inebriated state of her best friend). The dark stillness of the house also meant that Jerry could accompany Anne up the stairs with the encumbrance of Diana between them.

Moving as quietly as they could, Jerry helped to settle Diana comfortably in Anne’s bed, pulling off her boots and stockings, smoothing back her hair, and tucking the covers tightly about her. Sweating despite the chill, Anne turned her flushed face to Jerry’s with an exasperated look, hoping to share a wordless, “It’s a good thing we both adore this dear, drunken girl,” moment, but the look she found on Jerry’s face as he gazed lovingly down at the snoozing Diana made Anne feel like an intruder in her own bedroom.

Seeing that look upon someone else’s face made Anne remember the moment she had shared on the porch with Gilbert earlier that evening, and suddenly she felt as though a current were shooting through her veins again, the exhaustion of moments before instantly forgotten.

During Diana’s year in Paris, while Anne and many of their cohort had been studying at the nearby Queen’s College, Anne had helped to deliver letters between her dearest friend and her hired-hand-turned-brother. Out of respect for both parties, as well as for the sake of her own self-respect, Anne had never read any of the letters she handled between the two, nor did she pester Diana for details about the nature of their relationship - she knew that Diana would share when she was ready.
Truly the only things Anne knew about Diana and Jerry’s connection, she knew by gleaning it from the light that entered Jerry’s whole being when she would hand him a letter from Paris, or from the bone-deep joy she felt radiate through her beloved Diana and into her own being, tied as they were with bonds unbreakable, when Jerry was nearby.

Anne felt fairly certain, from the amount of time she knew Diana spent with Jerry in the barn (presumably when her parents thought her to be with Anne) that her friend had lost her heart entirely to Jerry, but the look she saw in Jerry’s eyes now… Anne read the tenderness and affection of a man so in love, not just enchanted or attracted, but rooted and tethered to Diana in a way that Anne could never be - the bonds Jerry felt being much stronger than friendship alone.

Anne’s eyes couldn’t look away from Jerry’s face, and she felt her stomach drop for the second time that evening in that delicious and unsettling way. She knew she shouldn’t stand here and eavesdrop on the look on his face and everything it was saying, but she could help being stuck to the spot and staring about as much as she could help feeling the powerful wave of warm happiness that was now crashing over her.

She loved these two people, and they loved each other. Could anything be more beautiful? Could anything prevent her feeling such prodigious joy in this stolen moment with them?

Later, perhaps, when she may recall that, should Diana tie herself to Jerry, Anne would lose the closest bond she had yet to experience in her life; or when she remembered that Diana’s parents were sure to object to such a match for their eldest and most precious daughter - then Anne’s joyful heart could be eclipsed by worry and doubt. But in this moment, she wanted to do nothing more than bless their union whole-heartedly, and then whoop and dance and spin and shout with them in celebration of the love that they shared.

Anne smiled her broad, face-crinkling smile just as Jerry turned to look up at her, remembering himself after his moment of stolen contemplation of dreams held but not-yet realized. He smiled back at Anne, both of them at a loss for words. He could see the happiness radiating from her, and crossed the room to give her a swift hug, lifting her off of her feet and spinning her quickly - as though he had read her thoughts and wanted to join her in celebration.

“Oh, Anne. I have to tell you. Diana and I -- We… Anne, she agreed to marry me tonight,” Jerry whispered with so much feeling that his eyes shone brightly, as though the effort of keeping himself from shouting the news instead of murmuring it caused him physical pain.

Anne was wild with jubilation, and she took Jerry’s hands in hers and squeezed them with all of her might, hoping to convey the loud feelings of merriment inside of her with only the pressure of her hands and the light in her eyes. Jerry’s broad grin squeezed a drop of wetness from each of his eyes as he smiled back at Anne, and they embraced once more.

And then Diana Barry, queen of both joyfully beating hearts nearby, gave an enormous and quite unladylike snore as she rolled over in Anne’s bed, her arm flinging out wildly and leaving her splayed across the mattress.

Jerry and Anne jumped, looking over at Diana, and then back at each other. After a still and silent beat, with Diana once again breathing peacefully, Jerry and Anne erupted in silent laughter, shaking their entire frames, with tears of mirth rolling down their cheeks. After many minutes spent trying to compose themselves, the desired outcome was finally reached, and Jerry bade Anne goodnight.

She watched out her window for him as he exited Green Gables and started on his long trek in the silent, snowy night. Her heart squeezed painfully as she watched him go, so happy and incredulous and something else - something almost melancholy. She turned her gaze up to the full moon hanging high above the snow-blanketed rolling fields nearby, and uttered a silent prayer on behalf of her friends - a prayer of gratitude and hope for their happy future together, and a small and tearful post-script for herself: “Please help me to know a love like Jerry’s for my darling Diana.”

Anne undressed swiftly, and climbed into the warm bed next to her gently sleeping friend (after only one or two loving-yet-firm shoves to make room), wiping at her tear-stained cheeks and hoping that sleep would soon find her.

However, minutes later Anne was certain that sleep never could find her in her current state of mind. She had turned over the news Jerry had shared with her over and over, and then recalled the look on his face as he gazed lovingly and longingly at his fiancee, which, as a matter of course, brought her back to other gazes from the evening....

Anne lay there, wide awake and remembering the fire in Gilbert’s eyes tonight, and felt her breath begin to quicken and her pulse race. She began to feel the now-familiar heat lick up her limbs toward her center as she remembered dancing with Gilbert that evening.

She was no longer able to recall the sound of the music or the steps of the dance, oddly enough. All she could remember, laying flat on her back with her hands splayed across the point at the center of her torso where the majority of the heat was now pulsing, was the feeling of his hand squeezing her fingers; tracing his fingertips along her open palm when it was time to let go, as though he hated losing contact with her even for a moment; the warmth of his hands gripping her waist - warmth that she felt despite layers of gossamer and lace and even her boned-corset; looking into his gaze and feeling as though she would be lost in his depths and never resurface; his hands on her face as he embraced her on the porch, their bodies so close together; the heat; the heat; the heat…

She felt herself drowning in the remembered heat, restlessly tossing and turning as she moved her hands over her own body, trying in vain to smother out the fire as it moved from her waist to her chest to her face to her palms to a point just south of her navel, where it seemed to concentrate and pulse with need.

Anne sat upright suddenly, turning to place her bare feet against the cold wooden floor of her bedroom, and was grateful to feel a sensation other than the burning that chased her from her comfortable bed. She couldn’t sit still, couldn’t remain in her childhood bedroom another moment. She crept back downstairs, hoping that a cool drink of water would help her to quench the overheated need raging within her. As she stood at the sink and filled a glass to overflowing with cool, clear water, another memory struck her.

It had been the hottest day of the summer when she dropped by Gilbert and Bash’s home just six months previously. She was hoping to solicit feedback from Gilbert on the latest bit of a story she had been working on - he was always good for criticism that helped to ground her characters and round-out her fantastical settings - but no one had answered her knock at the front door. So, as she usually did, Anne had taken herself around to the back porch to leave her pages under a large rock by the back door - a place where she had left countless stories, article submissions, newspaper clippings, requested recipes, shared schoolwork, and returned books over the years. She did not, however, make it to the back porch.

As she rounded the corner of the house, she suddenly found Gilbert standing on the lawn next to the porch. His back had been to her as he bent over a large barrel of rainwater, but Anne could see, from where she had come to an abrupt halt a mere step away from him, that he wore no shirt on his long, lean-muscled torso. His pants hung low on his hips, his suspenders hanging useless and limp around his legs. His face was buried in the water, and his arms scooped great handfuls of it up and over his dark, wet curls and down his back and arms.

Anne had not been rooted to the spot in mortification or even surprise, but in utter fascination of the form standing before her. She stood stock still as her eyes ran over the long muscles that ran from his shoulders to his hips, that wrapped around his arms, and the indentations and lines of his body as he moved, his skin glistening in the midday sunshine.

Suddenly Gilbert had scooped up an overly-large handful of water and splashed it over himself with excessive force, completely dousing the front of Anne’s white apron and dark blue day-dress in the process. She had stepped backward and gasped when the cool water hit her, and Gilbert stood upright and whipped around at the unexpected sound.

Anne was looking down at her wet clothes as he had turned, and when she looked up again she first saw his chest turned toward her, the water drops reflecting bright sparkles of sunlight as they rolled down his muscled chest and stomach. Anne’s eyes followed the droplets as they rolled and rolled until they hit the waistband of his slacks, slung low on his hips, the bones and muscles joining there in sharp angles and enticing planes slanting downward.

Still standing at the kitchen sink, Anne suddenly felt like pouring the water in the glass over her own head instead of between her lips. She groaned, exasperated with herself, as she set down the glass and turned toward the front door instead, quickly slipping on her boots and coat without properly fastening either of them. She needed to be outside, where the cold chill of the new year’s air would clear her head and the embrace of her beloved trees and shrubs, though naked in the cold night, would soothe the aching need for reason and order to prevail once more in her.

She wandered out, she knew not whence, into the night, taking care to breathe deeply as she went, waiting for the heat to dissipate and for calm to take its place.

Gilbert had chuckled awkwardly at Anne’s finding him thus indisposed - and, if truth be told, at the somewhat dumbstruck look on her face as her eyes scanned his bare torso. At the sound of his laugh her eyes had snapped up to meet his, which were wide with his incredulity at this unexpectedly vulnerable moment. They had exchanged a few awkward words - she didn’t mean to disturb him, he was happy to see her, she had just come to ask his advice, he was just washing up after working in the orchard, she would come back later, he would just situate himself and meet her inside, she couldn’t possibly stay, he must implore her to stay - he would only be a moment, she running away - shouting excuses about Marilla and neglected chores over her shoulder as she went.

In the cold, dark night, Anne made it as far as the Green Gables fence before she felt she could draw a full breath. She rested her body against the fence, looking out at the dear, familiar surroundings of home, and feeling herself to be an alien among them.

Who was this burning, tortured girl? What had happened to her intelligence and composure? And what, what exactly had transpired this evening to ruin her chummy friendship with Gilbert Blythe?

Anne opened the gate, turned to close it behind her, and ventured out into the night of a brand new year -- hoping against hope that the new Anne - who she felt being reborn from the ashes of the girl she had been before the burning and consuming fever of this endless night - would become a more recognizable and rational creature before morning light.

Chapter Text

Anne wandered out into the cold, dark night with no destination in mind. Nothing at all was in her mind, really - just the need to outrun whatever had overtaken her back at Green Gables. As she marched through the snow, she began to feel that she had finally left behind the tortuous heat that had plagued her all night long. Her head began to clear, and she once more recognized her own heart and mind as she sojourned on. 

She didn’t realize until it was too late, lost in the feeling of the sharp air against her cheeks and the satisfying warmth in her legs as she hiked on, that her feet had taken her to the Blythe/Lacroix farm without her deciding to go there. Her stride did not break as she approached the old wooden fence that Gilbert and Bash had repaired the winter that Sebastian had come to Avonlea. 

Anne had been so glad when Gilbert had come back home, and so much earlier than she had expected. She knew they had made a truce before he set out to sea, but there was simply something missing from Avonlea without him in it. She could admit that easily enough - would say it to his face, even, if it ever came up. There was nothing so scandalous in the thought that Avonlea just wasn’t quite home without Gilbert Blythe there, was there? 

She could justify everything away as innocent musings, save for the pounding of her heart as she thought the words “Gilbert” and “home” in the same sentence. 

Anne continued to wander, entering the farm at the gate and heading toward the apple orchard. She remembered  the first time the strength of her feelings around Gilbert had truly scared her - that day in the schoolhouse when Mrs. Lynde had come to teach them a reel for the County Fair. At the time, she realized full well that she was staring at him - craning her neck and contorting her body to keep her eyes on his - but she absolutely could not help herself. It was like her gaze and his were magnetically drawn together, and the pull kept her eyes on his. 

And then he had reached out a snatched her from her place in the reel, placing her decidedly by his side, her hand in his. Phantom electricity shot up Anne’s arm at the memory, as it always did - one of the many, many reasons she tried not to think about that dance was that, even though it happened two years ago, her traitorous body reacted anyway. She never could make sense of what had happened to her, to him. It scared her how much she enjoyed having a determined place by Gilbert Blythe’s side. Until the beautiful Miss Winifred Rose had entered the picture, dashing her budding dreams of keeping that place by his side. She had pushed him away then, and kept a friendly distance from him ever since. 

Even though Miss Rose had exited the picture just a few short months later, Anne’s relationship with Gilbert felt almost like a game of tag: he attempting closing the distance between them; her  deft maneuvering keeping just out of reach at the last moment. Her heart raced each time, yet she couldn’t just let herself stand still and let him reach out to her. She was too afraid of feeling out of control and out of her senses once more. She was too afraid she would wind up a lonely ‘me’ once more, instead of the ‘we’ she had once hoped to become. 

As this realization struck Anne, she felt suddenly winded and leaned against the nearby apple tree, it’s boughs naked and shivering in the frigid January night air. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert was no coward - had she really been too afraid of Gilbert to get close to him? No, not afraid of Gilbert - only of the way he made her feel. 

How did Gilbert make her feel?  Anne decided that, were she ever to really let herself think about it - make herself think about it - she would have to say that Gilbert made her feel… untethered. Adrift. Afraid that, were she to stay close enough to him to let him say what always seemed to be on the tip of his tongue lately, what she had spied in his dark eyes tonight as the clock struck midnight, that her world would never be the same. Afraid that she would lose her sounding board, her favorite conversation sparring partner, her partner and equal in intelligence and passion and ambition… 

Thinking of all of the secret hopes and wishes dearest to her heart that she had shared with Gilbert as they spoke about their futures, their hopes and dreams, their ideas for living good lives and making the world around them a better, fairer place to live, brought suddenly back to Anne’s mind the vows that she had made to her own reflection in a soon-to-be-torn veil so many, many years ago.

“I take you, matched to my intellect, proponent of my happiness, friend of my heart, to be my lifemate. Let us dance together as equal partners throughout the years.” 

Anne closed her eyes against the memory, smiling slightly despite herself. She had so idealized romance when she was young. If she was being honest, she still did - was she still waiting for a dark and handsome hero from one of her romantic stories to ride into town, brooding and solemn, and pour out his heart to her? Was that what would really make her happy? 

Anne closed her eyes once more, and imagined Gilbert’s smiling face as she thought of her long-forgotten vows once more. Matched to my intellect. Proponent of my happiness. Friend of my heart. Equals. Partners. 

Her eyes flew open suddenly and her hand flew to her heart. 

Moments later, Anne found herself standing outside of Gilbert’s first-floor bedroom at the back of the Blythe-Lacroix home. His window was dark. Of course it was. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, go home and get some sleep, she told herself sternly, her chest rising and falling rapidly as adrenaline coursed through her, warming her chilled limbs and pinking her cheeks. 

What are you doing here?! What do you mean to say - “Gilbert, I think I’m in love with you, and I think you’re in love with me. I think we should be together. I think you should marry me - though I cannot give you anything but myself, being a plain, ugly orphan with a teaching certificate and a head full of wild stories. Choose me.” 

The bitter cold surrounding Anne entered her very heart at the idea that Gilbert could want her - PREPOSTEROUS! - and she turned to leave. 

And then a bright light shone out from behind her, from within the very bedroom she had been standing beside, and Anne whirled back around to face the house. 

Gilbert was sitting up in bed, replacing the lantern he had just lit on his bedside table. He wore no shirt, a striped tobacco quilt laying across his waist and legs. He lifted his arms and ran his hands through his dark curly hair, causing it to stand wildly in all directions as he took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling in an exaggerated movement. 

Anne feared that this time her heart really would pound its way out of her ribcage and fall out onto Gilbert’s porch, its beat became so ferocious. The thud would be sure to draw his attention, and then what would I do?! she thought frantically.

In her terror of being caught, she took a small, involuntary step backward. Her desire to escape this ridiculous situation unseen far outweighed the same feelings that, moments before, had brought her to the verge of pounding on this boy’s window and asking him to love her. 

Her movement, however, caught Gilbert’s eye immediately, and he started visibly, as if he had seen a ghost. His breathing accelerated from deliberate slowness into panting instantly, and he shot to his feet. Anne was in complete lockdown - her wide eyes locked on his as her limbs were locked in place. Her thoughts whirred past - RUN, Anne, RUN! Thank HEAVEN that he has pants on! If only I had drank myself to distraction with Diana and was snoring peacefully at Green Gables. He really has a splendid chest - I wonder if the dark curls there would feel the same as those on his head… 

After an interminable moment of staring unblinkingly at each other, Gilbert padded across his bedroom floor and opened his window. Later, he would laugh at himself - he should have gotten dressed, put on shoes and a coat, gone outside to meet her, met her at the backdoor and invited her into their front room - anything but open his window and gasp out her name with his hands clutching his windowsill. 

“Anne.” He didn’t sound incredulous or angry or even amazed. She heard it again- the way he said her name was like a prayer; a promise.

In two broad steps she reached his open window. Bending slightly, Anne splayed her hands in his soft, dark curls (those upon his head, you naughty reader, you), and pressed her cold, soft lips achingly, wantonly against his.

Chapter Text

An electric jolt ran through Gilbert’s shocked, not-quite-fully-awake system, and his body involuntarily jerked upward as the apparition of Anne - the same girl who had kept him from sleep this night and so many before it - pressed her lips against his. Anne felt Gilbert jump in surprise, and then heard the sickening crack of his head colliding with the bottom of the open window. She released her hold on him instinctively as he took a step back, groaning and rubbing the top of his head briskly, his eyes watering. 

Anne reached out to either side of the window frame, feeling suddenly weak. She turned her hips sideways to sit upon the ledge there, and an involuntary laugh escaped her lips as she opened them intending to ask whether Gilbert was alright. 

She thought bemusedly that she should be mortified - after all she was here, outside of Gilbert’s room with no earthly reason for being there, and what had she done to excuse herself? Why, she had charged him, had kissed him! And now he was standing across from her, injured. But she couldn’t muster embarrassment; only the near-hysterical urge to laugh and laugh at the bewildered look on Gilbert’s face and at her own absurd behavior. 

Gilbert looked at her in steady confusion - wondering whether he was stuck in some sort of bizarrely painful dream after all. Or perhaps he had stumbled upon some fantastical combination of heated thoughts and regrets and desires which had conjured her here to his room in the middle of the night. He remained frozen in confusion until he saw her grey-green eyes beginning to water and her shoulders shake with mirth. His disorientation melted into a warm pool of delight, and he shook his head slightly both with incredulity and the urge to laugh bubbled up in him, too. 

The tears in Anne’s eyes began to roll gently down her cheeks as she struggled to control her hysterics. She looked up from Gilbert’s wooden floor after another moment of trying to control herself - what had gotten into her?! After another sharp breath in, Anne’s gaze began to climb from Gilbert’s bare floor to his bare feet, and then they travelled upward - up his rounded calves, past his bare knees and his faded white shorts. They climbed languorously up the faint trail of dark hair that lead from the top of his shorts to his navel, and onto his strong chest and shoulders. By the time Anne’s gaze had reached Gilbert’s eyes, she was no longer laughing. 

Once again, heat blazed suddenly and all-consumingly through her, and Gilbert, who had watched her slow assessment with a wide-awake hunger of his own, found his legs propelling him toward her, bending in a graceful and swift movement to press their lips together once more. 

Anne responded instantly, her hands threading themselves back into Gilbert’s hair, gripping tightly this time as if to prevent his leaving. 

A low groan from Gilbert’s throat vibrated through both of them as his hands grasped her waist, lifting her bodily through his open window. He overshot the amount of exertion required to bring her slender frame inside, distracted as he was by the slow but urgent movement of her lips upon his, and their bodies crashed together forcefully. 

Far from bothered at being crushed against Gilbert’s warm, bare chest, Anne emitted an involuntary moan and she gripped him tighter to her, one hand moving to the back of his neck. Gilbert did not, even for an instant, worry that her low, urgent sound had been one of pain or resistance, and it took every ounce of strength inside of him not to buckle at the knees — let alone drag her to his bed, mere feet away, which a large-if-entirely-ignoble part of him longed to do — knowing he had caused the girl that he loved desperately to react thusly to his embrace. 

Suddenly Gilbert remembered that this really was her, the girl he had loved for years -- having admitted it to himself years ago on a moonlit night on Miss Stacy’s front steps, when he had finally realized that Anne was who he wanted to be on a T-E-A-M with, now and forever - and he suddenly pulled back.

Stretching his arms out, he gently maneuvered Anne away from his body — he needed space to be able to think clearly and with his head, instead of with the other parts of him which ached to be much, much closer to this brilliant woman. Their lips came gently apart, both of their mouths open, as he gently held her shoulders at arm’s length from him. 

Gilbert looked into her eyes, willing himself to think clearly, but found therein only a fire burning in her gaze akin to the one burning within him. Her eyes questioned and invited, causing him to hold desperately to the thread of logic and propriety that had parted them. He could feel his grip on that thread slipping - oh, how he longed to throw propriety out of his still-open window and into the dark, still night.  

And so Gilbert did what he often did when he was restless and couldn’t sleep at night for picturing Anne’s face, trying-but-failing to imagine that she could look at him with all of the passion and yearning he felt for her - which happened to be exactly how she was looking at him right now. Were he to define that look, he would call it… hungry . Just thinking the word nearly threw Gilbert off course once more. But he held on, breathing in deeply and making himself begin to slowly, lovingly count the seven perfect freckles that never quite left Anne’s face, even in the dead of winter. 

1...2...3...4...5...6...7… Much as his grandfather had once counselled him to count sheep when he couldn’t sleep, Gilbert focused in on each perfect speck of brown on her pale, perfect visage, one at a time. As he focused upon each of those seven adorable freckles his breathing began to slow and his head cleared. 

Anne hadn’t moved, speechless, for once, and happy to be held by him, even at arm’s length. She watched Gilbert’s eyes rove over her face again and again, his eyes not quite meeting hers, and yet the loving, longing look never leaving his eyes. For once, she didn’t feel like running from that expression in his bright hazel eyes.  

She recalled seeing that look countless times in the past year, but she had always changed the subject, lightened the mood, mentioned Winnifred or Gilbert’s Perfect Future Wife or made an excuse to leave the room - anything to keep herself from falling for him. She had always run, but leaving was the absolute last thing she wanted to do right now. She had been hiding from him, from herself, for so long now that it felt almost sinful to stand perfectly still and bask in the warm glow of his loving attention. 

7...6...5...4...3...2...1… Gilbert finally felt that he could speak, but realized, after opening his mouth, that he had no idea what to say. He felt that perhaps he should apologize for dragging her into his room like a caveman, shirtless and pawing at her. But he didn’t feel the least bit sorry somehow. Probably now was the time to confess his love to her and ask her to be his forever more, yet somehow none of the many carefully constructed speeches he had practiced in his head over the past year would come to him now. Maybe he could invite her to sit next to him on the bed (as it was the only seat available to them) so he could speak with her as he usually did — make sure she was okay, ask her what had brought her here in the dead of this cold winter’s night, hear whatever fascinating and wonderful thing she had come here to say. 

However thinking of Anne on his bed, followed swiftly by the thought of what would surely become both of their untimely social deaths if he were to give in to his desire for her, caused Gilbert to begin frantically counting freckles once more. 

Anne watched Gilbert’s eyes soften as he gazed once more into her own. She continued to look on as his eyes darkened hungrily, and she once more felt herself engulfed in the most delicious, beguiling flames. Gilbert looked almost panicked shortly thereafter, and his eyes began roaming her face again. 

Anne watched him for another long moment, and then her face broke out in a wide smile, and she bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing at them both. The entire exchange between them had been the work of moments, but Anne suddenly felt dizzy at the way her entire life had changed in so short a time. 

“Gil, I — I think maybe I should sit down. Would you mind if I sat here?” Anne said, gesturing toward his unmade bed. 

Gilbert nodded his agreement, averting his eyes as she positioned herself in the center of the place where he had imagined her into being next to him so many nights. 

She looked up at him mischievously, hoping to catch his eye, satisfied instead at catching his averted eyes and pink cheeks instead. While he still was turned away from her, she noticed his slacks and shirt hanging on the foot of the bed. Her grin widened as she reached out to grab them, tossing them in his direction with an exaggerated, “Ahem!” 

His blush grew into a deeper red as he instinctively caught the clothes she tossed to him, and began to put them on. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her, and though she felt she should look away, she found that she couldn’t. By the time he had buttoned his shirt and could finally bring his eyes to meet hers they both were red-cheeked and grinning foolishly. 

Gilbert sat himself on the floor next to the bed, crossing his ankles in front of him so that his bare feet disappeared under his bed-frame. Anne rolled onto her stomach, bringing her face closer to his, her feet dangling off of the far end of the bed as she lay across it sideways. She brought her hands to rest under her chin, and Gilbert’s grin grew wider still. Oh, how he loved her. 

“Anne, did you… were you here to find me tonight? Is everything… alright?” Gilbert finished lamely. He wanted to get to the bottom of everything with Anne tonight, beginning with why she was here, but did he have to come at it so awkwardly?

“I’m so sorry, Gil. I must have frightened you half to death, haunting your window in the dead of night like that! I just… it’s just that I couldn’t sleep, and Diana was snoring so, and it was just so… so warm , and I went for a walk to clear my head, and then…  here I was.” Anne trailed off, wanting to tell him of all that she had discovered about herself, her undeniable feelings for him, but didn’t know how to begin. 

Gilbert chuckled softly, admitting, “When I got up - I couldn’t sleep either. I’ve been tossing and turning all night long! And then I… I found you outside of my window after… after wanting you here… I — after I had just been thinking about… you… Anne, it felt like I had conjured you here somehow.” He gazed at her in wonder, knowing that it was no magic of his own possession that had allowed this miracle. Anne, however, had always been magic - and somehow, tonight, she was sharing her magic with him. 

Anne smiled, but her vision was suddenly blurred with unshed tears. Could this clever, kind, passionate boy really want her here? She had run so far from him that standing still inside the radiance of his genuine feeling for her made her want to cry and laugh simultaneously. 

Gilbert knelt up swiftly next to the bed, grasping Anne’s still-cold hands in his own large, warm hands. “Anne, what is it? What’s wrong?” His thumb grazed over her cheek, hoping to soothe and comfort away whatever was hurting her. 

“Oh, Gilbert,” Anne whispered, the combination of the staggering emotions coursing through her and the sudden proximity of his face to hers inspiring reverence. “I came here tonight because I couldn’t outrun this any longer. I have been hiding for so, so long from the tidal wave that is washing over me now. And I’m sorry, Gil, I am. I’m sorry because I have made us both anxious and miserable and awkward when I could have just stopped and let it drown me happily. Because I am, truly. So, so happy. Oh, Gilbert.” 

As she had spoken, the tears had overflowed their boundaries and rolled freely down her cheeks, her effervescent smile the only thing keeping Gilbert from pain. Confusion, however, he claimed easily. 

“Anne, I... I don’t understand. You’re drowning? But… happy?” he laughed quietly at himself, and at the beautifully, bawling, unquestionably beloved girl in front of him. 

“I forgot the most important part!” Anne laughed, holding onto his hands as she slid legs around and worked her way to kneeling beside him on his cold bedroom floor. She looked into his hazel eyes once again, blinking away the last of the pesky tears so that she could see him clearly. 

“I’m happy because I finally let myself love you, Gilbert Blythe. Love you with all of me, as I have wanted to for so long. I love you, Gil. I love you and I’m finally going to let myself know it.” 

Chapter Text

Sebastian Lacroix had planned to spend a quiet New Year’s Eve at home. Delphine, his three-year-old daughter, had gone to bed at last — after one bath, two prayers - one for Dellie, one for him, three bedtime stories, four kisses, and five loud requests for water long after he had closed her door. Well, almost closed it. He always left half an inch of space open so that he would hear her if he called out for him in the night. 

The worst nights, of course, were those when Dellie called out not for him, but for her mother, his beloved Mary. Dellie was never fully awake on these nights - Bash always found her twisted up in her bedclothes, arms outstretched, whimpering one word over and over again.

“Mama.” 

Nights like that were rare, but they were the reason the door remained firmly never-quite-closed. Bash knew the nightmare all too well, too. How many times had he woken up from a dream where he was reaching toward Mary, but she remained frustratingly, tragically out of his grasp? How he wished there was someone who could take him in his arms and tell him it would be alright. Not someone. He wanted her. Mary.

Dear heaven, how he missed her. God, in His infinite wisdom, had taken his wife and Dellie’s mother years ago, but Bash would be damned if he would ever let his baby girl feel the pain of missing her mother all alone. He would always be there, if not because he loved her more than anyone on the earth then simply because Mary couldn’t be. 

Sebastian had fallen asleep in front of the dying fire that evening. He had intended to wait up for his young friend, after having watched Gilbert storm about the house, dressing fretfully and leaving for the Pye’s party with an electric storm building all around him. Bash knew that if Gilbert didn’t get it over with and tell the Anne-girl that he loved her soon, the boy was likely to combust. He had a feeling that young Mister Blythe would need a shoulder to cry on or a friend to celebrate with soon (Bash felt it could truly go either way - you never quite knew what you were going to get with Ms. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert), and he wanted to be there like Gilbert had been for him - in both sorrow and joy. 

Bash had woken with a start hours later to a cold fireplace and a dark house, silent but for the ticking of the large clock on the mantle. Gilbert must have come home hours ago - was the sky outside of the kitchen windows lightening the slightest bit? It must be close to dawn. Bash looked around to find that a blanket had fallen to the ground next to him when he had stood up. So Gilbert had come home, and instead of waking me he covered me up. Bash shook his head indulgently - what would life be without a friend like Gilbert in it? 

Bash’s bare feet padded quietly down the hallway toward his bedroom at the back of the house, when he heard a distinct thump . He froze mid-step, listening intently. So quiet that he almost couldn’t tell whether his ears were playing tricks on him he heard… a giggle ?

Sebastian crept forward again, further down the hallway to the bedroom door that belonged to Gilbert. Light peered through the crack at the base of the closed door, and as he stilled his progress forward once more, Bash heard more whispered laughter - one voice high-pitched, almost squeaky, and the other lower. He placed his hand on Gilbert’s door knob and waited for a long moment, his ears straining to hear inside, but the whispered noises had ceased.

Bash uttered a quick, silent prayer - Dear God, whatever I am about to walk in on, please, please let no one be naked. Amen. He grinned to himself, despite what had been an earnest request to the almighty, and turned the doorknob. 

___________________________________________________________

The joyous, tearful confessions of love - encompassing past follies and future promise -, had come and gone hours ago, as Anne and Gilbert had knelt before one another on the cold wooden floor of the later’s bedroom and poured out their innermost hearts to one another. Gilbert never begrudged Anne for confessing first - he knew that he would happily follow her lead for the rest of their lives - but he did feel that she had done a much tidier job of things. 

Upon hearing Anne, the most passionate, good-hearted, incredible woman he had ever known, admit that she loved him with all that was in her, Gilbert had experienced a violent torrent of emotions - her metaphor of the tidal wave had been apt, indeed. He opened his mouth to shout with joy, to tell her all of the things he felt for her, to ask her to be his forever. Other reactions to her confession that he would have happily accepted also include, but are not limited to, his happily kissing her into the floor and never stopping until daylight, when he could have set out to find a minister or ship’s captain to marry them then and there so he never again would be parted from her. 

Instead, however, from his open mouth came a noise that can only be described as hippopotamus-esque . His croaking sob surprised them both, as did the tears that poured from his eyes. He tried to smile, to show her how happy, how very happy, he was, but instead he sobbed again, the tide of passion, longing, joy, expectation, and a few sleepless nights combining against his normally staid nature. Losing strength, as well as the confidence he previously had in himself to properly woo and win Anne, he collapsed into her lap, burying his face and crying hard for several hysterical moments. 

Anne froze in shock at first, unsure what to do with the sobbing boy in her lap. And then he reanimated enough to wrap his long, strong arms around her waist, pulling himself to her shoulder and holding her close as he choked out, “Anne. Oh, my Anne. I love you. Oh, I love you, my Anne-girl.” 

She laughed then, her eyes filling with tears, too, as she wrapped her own arms around him. “Oh, Gilbert. My own, sweet love,” she chuckled into his ear. And then she kissed that ear quickly, loving the way the bottom of his earlobe felt velvety smooth and fitted roundly against her bottom lip. Wanting to know whether the skin of his neck was as yielding, she turned to press a kiss there, and then another lower onto his neck, where it met his shoulders. 

She wasn’t sure when Gilbert’s tearful torrent had passed, or for how long she had been kissing and nipping her way across his neck, but she suddenly found that his hands were on either side of her face, and he drew her lips to his breathlessly. In between kisses — some soft and sweet, some long and lingering, and others still studded with desire, their open mouths hot and impatient — Gilbert found the words to tell Anne some of what he had felt for her since the fateful day she had cracked her slate over his head. 

When her knees had grown sore, the pattern of the woodgrain beneath them tattooed across her flesh, she pulled both of them to standing. Turning her back to him, Anne looked out the window for any sign of dawn. Gilbert, sensing that she was about to say something proper and reasonable about her going home, put his hands on her waist and gently pulled her toward his bed. She laughed, putting her hands on top of his and squeaking quietly as he situated her atop the mattress, her back to the headboard. He walked around to the other side of the four-poster, holding her eyes with his.

Anne was sure that this was the moment when she should insist upon her going, or at least upon his staying on the floor or pulling up a chair, but she was caught breathlessly in his stare, and more than anything she wanted to know what he would do next, trusting him implicitly as she did. 

Gilbert picked up the two pillows thrown across his bed as he approached the other side of it, and he placed them carefully next to Anne perpendicularly down the bed - one spanning from her waist to her knees, the other from knees to feet. Then, still holding her eyes with his, he sat carefully next to her - the pillow barrier between them, his torso, too, supported by the headboard. He smiled impishly at her, and she laughed too loudly, clapping her hands over her mouth to stifle the sound. Gilbert reached over to grasp the hand pressed against her mouth in his, and then he brought it to his lips, kissing it gently, and then laying it upon the pillow between them, his fingers threaded through hers.

She let go of his hand briefly after a moment, leaning forward slowly and removing the coat she wore to reveal her fine white nightgown - the only thing she had been wearing when she had fled Green Gables earlier. He trained his eyes upon hers as she did this, afraid that if he looked down he would lose his head entirely and forget just how precious she was to him. He wanted to protect her, and cherish the blissful future laying before them. He also wanted much, much more, glimpsing the lace-trimmed white gown from the corner of his eye. She broke their gaze as she looked down to once more twine her fingers through his, and he took a deep, stabilizing breath. 

It was in this attitude that the two lovers sat, nearly side-by-side, and began to talk “of shoes and ships and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”. They had often spoken of their goals and ambitions as good chums, but tonight they spoke about their dearest dreams - dreams too close to their hearts to be spoken of above a whisper. Their fingers wound and unwound, thumbs caressing, as they shared back and forth, on an on. There, in the endless night that would come to mark the birth of their happiness, they built a house of dreams in whispers and wishes. Their words began the blissful work of laying the foundation for their future together - one where both could be loved and cherished, each of them supporting the other in their ambitions and ideals. 

After a time Gilbert found himself sharing his ideas on medicine - how his studies would be geared toward merging ancient knowledge - like that of the Mi’kmaq medicine woman - with the conventional wisdom of Doctor Ward had taught him. He spoke of his deep desire to be able to add to the wealth of human knowledge and understanding. The passionate way he spoke of helping others and opening minds always had made Anne’s heart beat faster, but hearing his deepest fears and desires with her hand held tightly in his made Anne’s heart feel like it had grown uncomfortably large inside of her chest. 

“Oh, I’m sure your knowledge of the human body will help you immensely at medical school - though I’m still not sure that I believe that wild yarn Bash spun for me last Christmas — about the baby you delivered in Trinidad when you were just sixteen ?! Surely he was putting me on…” Anne teased, her eyes dancing in the lantern light. 

“Oh,” Gilbert laughed sheepishly, his cheeks flushing pink. “Bash told you about that, did he?” 

“He was in earnest?! I should have known - just like you were back on the farm, right?” she laughed in amazement. Gilbert grinned - he loved feeling her quiet laughter shake the bed beneath them. A wicked glint entered his eye, but Anne was unaware of it, still shaking her head in wonder at having found a partner as intrepid was. 

Gilbert made his move then, pushing himself up on the bed to kneel next to her and reaching out to tickle her ribcage through the thin, fine fabric of her nightgown. His sudden attack caused her to lean involuntarily away from him, thunk ing his headboard against the bedroom wall. They both laughed until their sides ached, Anne kneeling up to battle him back with her own tickling fingers. After a few moments of quiet struggle, Gilbert grasped her around the middle and pulled her tightly against his chest, kissing her deeply. 

And then the bedroom door was flung open.