Chapter Text
“Marilla, it's only two days, I can stay here by myself.” Anne couldn't believe that not only were Matthew and Marilla leaving her behind, but they had also decided she needed a babysitter too!
“Nonsense! What if you light the house on fire, or fall and break something, or get lost in the woods and no one notices you're missing.”
“I really don't see why they have to sleep over. Couldn't you just have Jerry check to see if I'm alive when he comes up in the mornings to do his chores?”
“Certainly not, you require constant supervision.” Anne only grumbled in response. “Bash and Gilbert and little Dellie will be here in a few hours, in time for them to help with dinner.”
“Is it absolutely necessary for all of them to come?” Anne mumbled, mostly to herself.
“Gilbert is coming to watch over you and Bash is there as a chaperone.”
“Gilbert and I don't need a chaperone! All we do is fight and talk about school.” Marilla gave her a look she couldn't decipher.
“It's two days, Anne, it'll go by quick enough.” Anne was still glaring at the floor. “Are you going to say goodbye? No? Alright.” Marilla started to turn away.
“Wait!” She jumped into Marilla's arms, nearly knocking her over. “Promise me you'll have a safe journey? And you'll be home in time for supper Sunday night?”
“Yes, yes,” Marilla said dismissively, but she wrapped and up in her arms as well. When Anne finally let her go, Matthew stepped up from where he had been waiting silently on the other side of the porch and pressed a kiss to the top of Anne’s head.
***
Anne was angrily chopping vegetables in the kitchen when they arrived, despite how much she wished they wouldn't show. Bash sauntered right in and sat at the table, setting Dellie’s basket in front of him while he made his greetings. Gilbert lingered in the doorway, almost nervously, hat in hand. The heat of the kitchen was in stark contrast to the cool, spring air outside. It had rained the day before and the sun had yet to reveal itself and warm the earth. Anne said a simple “Hello” and turned back to her cooking.
“Anne, do you-- do you need a hand with anything?” She glared up at Gilbert.
“No,” she snapped, louder than she intended. A few moments later when she almost dropped an entire bowl, he tried again.
“Are you really sure I can't be of any assistance.”
“No, I don't need any help and I certainly don't need you here.” She instantly felt bad for yelling at him. It wasn't Gilbert’s fault Marilla asked him to come. He genuinely did just want to help. She was just so frustrated. She wanted Marilla to be able to trust her.
She resumed cooking silently, not able to look him in the eye. He made this way to the other end of the counter and just stood there watching her. If she had turned around, she would have seen the way his eyes followed every move her fingers made and the way she kept tossing her braids over her shoulder. She also would have seen Bash silently laughing to himself as he watched the helpless look grow on Gilbert's face.
Minutes passed and Anne actually did find herself in need of some assistance, she couldn’t quite juggle everything at once. But she couldn't just admit defeat, not to Gilbert. So, she took the bowl she had been stirring and placed it in his hands without a word. She yanked her hand back to her chest when their fingers brushed. She tried to ignore the sensation of lightning on her skin at the contact. She momentarily forgot what she was doing and stared up at him.
Bash cleared his throat. “I'm just going to take Dellie out to, uh, see the horses. You let me know when supper is ready.” Then she blinked and he and Dellie were already gone.
Anne and Gilbert stayed quiet for a few more long moments before he came up to her side and spoke, choosing his words carefully. “I know… that you don’t want us here, but I couldn’t say no to Marilla when she asked, and it wouldn’t have felt right to leave you up here all alone.” He placed his hand on the table next to where hears was resting, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off of it.
“I know that. It just feels like Marilla still treats me like a child. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, she should know that. I’ve been doing it for years before I came to green gables. I was often even responsible for multitudes of awful children as well.” He flinched at the mention of her old life in the orphanage. She hardly spoke of it, but he knew it was horrible for her. And now she mentioned her terrible experience in such a casual manner, it made his heart ache for her.
“Marilla knows you're not a child, it’s just that you're her child and she needs to know that you are safe, even when she’s not here to protect you.”
“I know.”
“Besides, trouble does have a way of finding you.”
“Hey!” She swatted his chest with the back of her hand. “You're lucky I don’t have a slate nearby.” Her eyes traced over the little scar on his temple. It was pale against his tanned skin. Anne wondered when his teasing had gone from infuriating her, to making her laugh.
His smile faded and his tone got serious again. “Anne, sometimes, you need to accept help, not for your sake,” his voice was barely a whisper, “But for the sake of those who care about you.” She gave him one more shy smile.
“Okay,” she whispered back. Gilbert had a sudden urge to run away before he found himself accidentally admitting something that he definitely wasn’t ready to admit.
“Um, I guess I’ll go ring the bell for Bash,” he said.
“Oh… right.” She felt very confused by the pang of regret that their moment had not lasted any longer. He turned and walked away. He was almost at the door when she called after him, “Hey Gil?” He looked back over his shoulder. “Thank you.” He paused, then smiled and nodded, and slipped out the door. It was funny, but Anne thought that even though his lips were smiling, there was something sad in his eyes.
***
Dinner passed peaceably enough. Dellie babbled away at the end of the table and it kept the three of them occupied. The awkwardness eventually faded when Anne and Gilbert got into a small, mostly nonsensical, squabble about what the biggest river in the world is that lasted long after they had all finished eating.
“All I'm saying is that the Nile River is the longest, by far.”
“But longest isn't largest. A better qualifier would be the amount of water flow, which would be the Amazon river.” Anne argued back.
“If you weren't so stuck on semantics, you would see that longest is largest, according to the most generally accepted measurement of rivers.” Gilbert could not actually care less about the longest, sorry, largest river, what he cared about was making Anne just mad enough that she got that steely look in her eyes and her cheeks flared red. One of these days it may get him smacked upside the head, again, but something told him it would be totally worth it for these moments when he had Anne's attention fully on him.
Bash had to say Anne's name three times with increasing volume before he could break through the curtain between her and the rest of the world.
“Sorry, yes?” He laughed when she was immediately back to all sweetness.
“I think little Dellie is ready to be put to bed. You think you could show us to our room?”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” She looked around at the disaster of a kitchen her cooking had left behind.
“I can get started on washing the dishes,” Gilbert offered. Anne gave him a small smile as she led Bash, with Dellie on his hip, to the stairs.
“Marilla put the old spare crib in Matthew’s room, it's the biggest, so you and Dellie can both sleep in there. I'll have Gilbert sleep in the guest room. It's closest to my-- to the stairs.”
“Thank you, Anne. Say thank you, Dellie.” Dellie burbled out a few syllables that were definitely not thank you.
When Anne got back downstairs, Gilbert was at the sink with his sleeves rolled up over the elbow and his hands covered in soap bubbles. As she watched the way his forearms flexed and his fingers slid over the ceramic, she got a peculiar feeling in the base of her stomach. She immediately tried to convince herself that the feeling was just that she had a little too much to eat.
When she snapped back to reality, she said in a voice a little closer to a whisper than she'd have liked, “I can dry.”
“Oh.” He seemed stared when he turned and saw her in the doorway. She wondered where his thoughts had been so intently that he hadn't heard her return. “You don't need to do that, I've got it. Besides, you cooked, it's only polite for me to handle the dishes.”
“You helped.” She worried that maybe she had said that too fast. “With the cooking, I mean.”
“Well then, if you insist.”
Anne thought that maybe she was going crazy. After all, this was only Gilbert. Her longtime rival and now somehow her second-best friend. So why then, did sparks shoot into her fingers when they brushed his. And why did that knot in her stomach grow tighter when he smiled at her. There was something about the way that he washed each dish, taking his time to be thorough like he wanted to stretch this out as long as he had an excuse. It also seemed like his shoulder bumped hers more often than absolutely necessary. Gilbert, for his part, was really, really trying not to picture them doing dishes together in a house of their own. Okay, so maybe he was a little bit, totally and completely gone for her.
When they were both entirely sure every last dish was cleaned and dried, Anne showed him to the guest room and accidentally blurted out in a very embarrassing manner, “My bedroom is just next door there, if you need anything.” Before she ran out of the room. She then proceeded to grab a book from on top of her dresser, a Jane Austen novel, and went back down to the sitting room, where Bash had been trying to practice his knitting. She tried to read, but every time he missed a stitch, she would have to set down her book and explain to him how to fix it.
She was just telling Bash for the tenth time the difference between a knit and a purl and why yes, it did actually matter, when Gilbert walked into the room and she stopped breathing. He had removed his vest and the top button of his shirt was undone. Something about the little glimpse of the skin of his neck made her mouth suddenly and very confusingly start to water. And worst of all, his hair was tousled, like he had repeatedly run his fingers through it. Anne wanted nothing more than to touch those curls. Instead, she kept both hands firmly on the sides of her book. Even when he sat down next to her on the sofa. She tried for the millionth time that evening to focus on her task, the book in front of her.
Her eyes darted over to the medical text in front of Gilbert. “What is that?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“It's an anatomical drawing of the heart.” Subtle, Bash thought.
“Really?” Anne abandoned all pretense and scooted closer to Gilbert and tucked her feet up to her side. He explained to her how all the valves and chambers worked. Almost an hour passed before Anne started making little yawns and her head was dangerously close to resting on his shoulder. “I think we should all get to bed,” Gilbert suggested, tenderly closing the book. He stood up and extended a hand to Anne to help pull her to her feet. The poor girl looked so tired he worried she wouldn't make it up the stairs.
“You two go on ahead,” Bash said, “I think I really am close to figuring this out this time.” Gilbert desperately hoped Anne hadn't seen the wink Bash had shot him. They walked up the stairs shoulder to shoulder, then stopped and faced each other in the doorway. They just stared at each other for a minute, neither sure what to say. They were too close, Gilbert couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs, and she kept gazing up at him, head tilted back.
“Goodnight, Gil,” she mumbled.
“Goodnight, Anne.” He trailed his fingertips down her arm, before slipping them in and then back out of her hand. She stepped back and gently shut the door. He stared at the spot she had been standing and realized that if there was ever an ideal time to kiss her, that was probably it. He walked back to his room alone.
He tossed and turned for a while, and even when he finally fell asleep, it was a light and restless slumber. Which was why he was so easily awoken by a scream only a few hours later.