Chapter Text
*Flashback to Monday 1st of March 1898*
GILBERT
Anne paces around my kitchen as she rants. “-how you can be so stupid! I even told you to be careful with the pan because of its broken handle and you still didn’t listen! What do I need to do to get anything through your thick head?” Anne mutters, before pivoting on the spot to face me. “Oh! Maybe I should smack another slate over your head since I obviously didn’t do it hard enough the first time! Although you’ll have to let me borrow yours, mine’s been through the traumatic experience of coming into contact with you.” She pauses. Probably needs to catch her breath. Probably just realised I hadn’t participated in the toxic back and forth in a few minutes now. Probably not noticing me breathing a sigh of relief that her pause in speech has allowed me to hear the torrential rain outside. One sort of thunder and lightning is much more pleasant than the other.
Then the break in the storm is over when she realises that I am ignoring her. Or at least trying to. “Oh, I’m sorry great, gracious, divine Gilbert John Blythe.” She spits out each word like poison and if it was anyone else I wouldn’t get so affected by her prods. “How dare I even assume us mortals get to borrow from your arrogant, stuck up, pretentious, know-it-all-"
Giving up on pretending to ignore her, I turn in my chair and glare at Anne. “Look,” I snap. “I’m just trying to do my work,you’re the one who came charging in looking for a fight!”
Anne scoffs. “You’re the one yelling!” She retorts, as if she hasn’t been ranting a vitriolic monologue for the past five minutes.
I jerk myself from the position hunched over my books to sit back in my chair, openly facing her and throwing my hands out - one holding a very sharp pencil. “You know what! You are welcome to leave at any moment.”
She chuckles, like choking on her own offence. “Believe me, I would run outside to get hit by lightning right now if it meant I got to be rid of your presence, but you know right well that the chances are decidedly not in my favour. And also, Marilla won’t let me leave until she comes by to walk me home.”
“Oh, right,” I retort, turning back to my work. “Because you always do whatever Marilla says.”
I smirk at the stutters, growls and stomps behind before she exclaims, “I don’t directly disobey her! Those were- those were mistakes!”
“I’m the one yelling, am I?” I murmur, crossing my t’s with smug, straight lines.
Anne yells in frustration, making Mary look up from her knitting for the baby in the corner.
“The cabinet’s over there if you want something to punch. Again,” I point out helpfully, not looking up from where I’m reading along with my fingers.
Then my chair is pulled out from under me and I land on the wooden floors, looking up at Anne as she yells, “A MISTAKE! IT WAS A MISTAKE! AN ACCIDENT!” She uses my ladder-back chair as a barricade between us, her white knuckled fingers clenching the back of it.
Some people say Ruby Gillis is beautiful when she cries. Some people say Diana Barry is beautiful when she laughs. Some people say Anne Shirley-Cuthbert is beautiful when she is happy - I’ve seen it, it’s true - but I have never been more attracted to Anne than when her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are flashing and her whole body is heaving with all the breaths I take away from her. But just because one could find the names, symptoms and properties of my every hormone increase in the book on the table does not mean that I am calm about anything that’s happening. Not the ‘Anne pushed me on the floor and gave me a bruise’ thing. Not the ‘lots of extremely inconvenient feelings’ thing. Not the ‘Anne irritating me with every word out of her impossible mouth’ thing, either.
I haven’t realised how fond I was of her passion and temper until now, when it flicks a switch on in me instead. Like turning on a light when I very much want to go back to sleep. Especially recently. She seems to hate me with every fibre of her being recently, and I wish I could love someone else. Someone who might have a maybe inkling of loving me back. So no, I’m most definitely not calm and peaceful and content.
Anne raises her eyebrow and smooths her voice. “Lest we forget the time you were so foolish as to smash the hallway mirror.”
“What has that got to do with anything?!” I shout.
Anne pins my eyes with her and moves her jaw until I see it click. “You were talking about mistakes. I felt it only fair I include some of yours.”
Standing up, I roll my eyes. “How gracious of you, Carrots.”
There’s a slight pause and I can’t help but look to see the rage fill out her body at that name. She sticks a finger in my face and I move to step back from the static energy between us only to bump into the table. “I think I’ll take my chances with the lightning!” She yells. “You rude, impossible, unfeeling BOY!”
I stumble into my chair and clench my shaking hands. “Good,” I snap, “because I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.”
She whips back around. “Handle?! I’ll give you something to handle-“
“LEAVE!” I close my eyes, dropping the pencil before I snap it and alert Anne to how close her words are to snapping me into insanity and making me push her against whichever wall is closest and kiss her until her lips are the same shade as her hair. “Christ!”
Anne shoves something in my face and I swat it away. “You know, I came here to give you your pen back,” she pockets the something just as the word ‘pen’ registers in my mind and starts to turn away, “but I guess that’s just too much for you to 'handle'.”
I jump up, my chair clattering to the ground, and try to take the pen out of Anne’s hands. We grapple for it, muttering through clenched teeth.
Anne says, “Stop that!”
“Give it back!”
“No! You gave it to me!”
“Well, I’m taking it back!” I yank it over to my side.
“No, you’re not!” Anne pulls it back.
I narrow my eyes. “Yes. I… AM!”
We fall back onto the ground, and I look down to see half a pen gripped in my hand, ink splattered all over my clothes and slicking my hands black. Slowly, I lift my eyes to Anne who now has black freckles on the lower left side of her face, and a dark stain spreading across the fabric at her chest. Our lips part with realisation at the same time.
II
———
ANNE
“What were you even fighting about?” Mary cackles as we fill up the sink with water boiled over the fire.
It’s silly for Mary to still think we need a specific topic to fight over. She should know by now that there’s just something that doesn’t work about us. Maybe one day we’ll grow enough for our differences to fit into place, but as of right now they are clashing every time we try to get closer.
I stand over the sink (dressed in the spare dress I keep over here for situations such as this) elbowing him every chance I get as we aggressively rub our clothes in the soapy water. Silently seething, we are unable to keep ourselves from throwing sharp, irritated glances at each other.
“If you had just given it to me-“ He starts, muttering darkly.
I rub the dress harder. “Oh, because it’s always my faul-“
His arms bump into me as he tries to outdo me. “At least almost all the time, yeah, I’d say-“
“Well, if you weren’t such a-“
“I honestly don’t know what I do to provoke you!” He pushes his shirt back under the water, splashing it on the floor and flinging water at me as he gestures with dripping hands. “I try so hard and you always hate me and I never know what I do wrong!”
I step closer, chest-to-chest, an acidic remark ready for when I finally catch the lie in his eyes, the joy in his voice, my whole body trembling with how much the joke would upset me if I saw anything but frustration and overwhelm in his eyes.
He steps away from me and plunges his hands back in the water, our competition more aggressive than before.
“I don’t think the ink is going to come out, hon,” Mary says after a few moments of violent splashing.
“It will,” Gilbert says at the same time I say, “I’ll make it.”
We glance once more at each other and scrub more violently.
Eventually I decide to look in the cupboards for some toothpaste to help lift the stubborn stain. I can feel him glancing anxiously over at me and back to the sink over and over again. I wouldn’t be able to control myself either if I suspected him having an edge over me. Eventually he gives up and calls out, “Anne? Where are you going?”
“After all that, now you don’t want me to leave.” I walk back to rifle through the cupboards under the sink.
“Keep your friends close and your apparent enemies closer,” Gilbert replies, closing the cabinet door with his legs.
I scowl up at him. “Well, Gilbert, just how close do you want me,” I spit.
———
BASH
From the doorway where I pretend I haven’t been watching, I suck in a breath, entertained by how hard Anne is making this for Gilbert. Half of me is curious to see how he would snap, half of me knows I may have to step in at some point to prevent it. All of me takes a seat beside Mary and pretends to be helping her reorganise her disaster of a knitting basket as I watch.
“Far, far away.” Blythe clenches his jaw and averts his gaze, plunging his hands under the water, more for something to do with them than anything else, I reckon.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Anne says, standing up again, “given that your friends must be far far away. I’ve never seen them before.”
I catch Mary’s eye, gaping in mock offence as she shakes her head and grins, one eye on her knitting, one eye on the scene at the sink.
“Maybe you'd find one if you looked in the hallway mirror,” Blythe says, before turning to face her properly and saying sarcastically, “Oh wait, I almost forgot. I smashed it. Lucky you reminded me!” He splashes water up her front and she steps back, soaked and fuming.
Breathing heavily through her nose, she raises herself to his height and lightning fills the house with a shock of light at the exact moment in Anne’s pause to collect herself where Blythe’s eyes fall to her mouth.
In a controlled, levelled voice, Anne whispers, “You’re pissing me off.” I barely catch the words, and the contrast to the screaming match I heard on the other side of the house from before gives me shivers.
“You’re…” he breathes, clenching his jaw, his gaze fixed stubbornly on her lips until he squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re…”
“What?” She demands. “What am I?”
He breathes deeply and opens his eyes, “You, Anne, are arguing with me because you enjoy it. I know, because that used to be why I did it.”
She slams the door on her way out, one storm storming into another.
———
GILBERT
“What happened to you there, Gilbert?” Mary smiles, standing up to get dinner started. “No more fond smiles and thoughtful debates?”
Hanging my shirt and Anne’s dress over the backs of our chairs, I blow out a breath and stand beside Mary at the bench, glad she waited until Bash got bored and left. “I don’t know. It’s just… irritating to see her at school with Diana and Cole being such a happy, easy, loving, loyal, supportive friend. And then she’ll see me and instantly scowl.”
Mary tuts sympathetically and passes me a handful of potatoes and a knife. “I thought you got over that little rivalry. At our wedding, didn’t I see you two being quite civil? More than, maybe?” She giggles and bumps my hip.
“Exactly. But the thing with Anne and I seems to be that as soon as I start thinking about how well we’re going, she’ll hate me just as fiercely as she loves everything else.” I focus on not slipping the knife over my finger as I mutter, “I just wish that she would love me like she loves all her other friends and someone else could be who she hated, for once.”
There’s a pause where I smile a little and glance apologetically at Mary. “I make it sound so bad,” I chuckle. “It’s the rain.”
Mary laughs. “Your friendship with Anne sounds difficult.” She leans in and whispers gleefully, “But anything worth having is some trouble!” Retrieving a bowl from a cupboard and one handedly cracking eggs, she says, “And maybe she doesn’t treat you like her other friends because you’re different.”
I frown at the potatoes at the new angle to a problem I’ve been trying to solve for years. “I doubt it but… maybe.”
“So were you really angry at her just now? Or was that the rain making you act so?”
I shake my head fondly and roll my eyes, dumping the peeled potatoes in a pot of boiling water. “Of course not. As concerning as it sounds, I’m used to it. I find… peace in her violence! Clarity in our insanity! I used to find entertainment in our arguments. Now she’s just… It’s just… very confusing feelings…” I trail off, unsure how to explain it to Mary. “No, that wasn’t out of anger it’s- I’m- I was- frustrated…”
“Hmm. Well,” Mary suggests, “maybe she gets frustrated by you, just like you do by her.”
I raise an eyebrow and chuckles, scraping the potato scraps in the chicken bin. “I think our frustrations are quite different.“
The door opens, cold air blowing into the cozy kitchen as a sopping wet Anne walks back in, red hair plastered to her cheeks.
My lips part and I watch, my eyebrows faltering as she shivers. Dripping water over the floorboards, she pulls a thin stack of papers from her sleeve and places them in front of me.
“You want me to go over your essay?” I dip my head to catch her eye, both of which she averts.
Quietly she mumbles, “Yes, please.”
My face breaks out into a smile and I move two chairs to sit by the fire and silently offer Anne my sweater which she pulls over her head gratefully. We spend the evening huddled over our assignments, a friendlier back and forth occurring over the fire, and over the sound of the storm... it feels like home.