Chapter Text
“So.”
“Soooooo.” Gilbert swirls his green plastic spoon through his mint choc chip, head bent over the chrome table in the corner of Avonlea’s ice cream parlour. He knows Anne has a habit of swinging her legs so his are cramped up under the seat to ensure they don’t bump and spark some sort of explosion that destroys all of Avonlea and probably Earth and the whole universe too.
“Um, so we kissed. Big deal.” Anne gestures her bubblegum pink spoon in the air after licking the strawberry sorbet off.
“Yeah. Pft.” Gilbert swallows. “Big deal.”
Very big deal. Very very big deal. ‘Kissed’ seems like the biggest understatement of the year. Kissed is what happened that one time Anne turned her head as Gilbert went to kiss her cheek and they laughed off the incident. Kissed is what happened in Year 7 when Moody and Diana paired up for spin the bottle and Moody said she tasted of buttercups despite it being rather obvious he hadn’t tasted her at all.
Gilbert had definitely tasted Anne. Not that she tasted like much, but still. It was not just ‘kissed’.
“Shush!” Anne smiles around her spoon, teeth clicking along the plastic.
“I didn’t say anything!” Gilbert laughs, leaning back against the powder blue booth.
“Well you’re thinking so loud I can hear you,” Anne laughs along, red wisps from her braid blowing in the slight breeze from the store’s open French doors.
An awkward silence falls over them and Gilbert breaks it with a sigh, looking up at Anne with an almost imperceptible side-tilt of his head that wordlessly accuses her of being just as troubled as he is over the so-not-just-a-kiss.
Anne slumps back in her chair with a grinning wince, staring at her cup of strawberry ice-cream before running a hand over her face, shoulders shaking with mirth. “Oh,” she sighs, grimacing back up at him. “It was kind of a lot, wasn’t it?”
Gilbert raises one wry brow at his mint choc chip, breathing out a sarcastic chuckle. “I’ll say.” He picks up his cup to lick the rim as Anne scoops another spoonful into her mouth, the both of them edging cautious looks at each other, breaking out into smiles and blushes within a silence unbroken by words. So many thoughts and feelings but no sentences to string them together.
Anne’s converses kick softly at Gilbert’s ankles, unlocking his legs to bump against hers, and the world doesn’t explode. It just warms and melts a little, like gelato on his tongue.
“Can it not be a huge thing?” Anne says quietly, ducking to meet Gilbert’s eyes.
“It kind of was a huge thing, Carrots.” Gilbert smiles. “But, yeah, let's not make it a thing with a capital T.”
Anne’s shoulder slump with relief, and she gets another one and a half spoonfuls through her ice cream before suddenly leaning over their little, wobbly table. “Wait, did you… did you want it to be a thing with a capital T?”
“No, I-“ Gilbert scratches his ear. “I mean yeah but… no?”
“Talk me through it,” Anne says, her mouth full of strawberry ice cream as she leans her elbows on the shiny tabletop.
“I mean,” he rolls his eyes, sighing, “I don’t want to date. I don’t want to be a couple.”
“Yuck.”
“Exactly. And I don’t want it to be like- a thing with everyone at school getting in our business.“
Anne shudders.
“And I… kind of love us how we are, the way we hang out, I wouldn’t want to put pressure on like- dates and… wooing or whatever.”
“Wooing?” Anne chuckles, but her eyes are fixed on scraping non-existent ice cream from the sides of the clean cup.
Gilbert leans back and swallows, fiddling with his own cup as he clears his throat. “But, um, like…” he cricks his neck, “I didn’t mind… ‘the thing’,” he says teasingly, but his sober eyes glance for a hint of a response in hers.
She smiles. “I didn’t mind it either. The thing.”
The bell above the front door jingles and Gilbert jerks his head towards the entrance, his shoulders lowering when he sees it is just an unknown father and two children. He softens them a welcoming smile that Anne clocks as relieved.
The reason why sinks into her like liquid lead, rendering her whole being heavier than the helium balloon it was two seconds ago. He was worried it would be one of his teammates. What would Moody, or Jerry, or any of them say if they found out that Captain Gilbert Blythe - who has done everything short of writing 'NO DATING' in the ice hockey handbook - is eating ice cream, and having a DTR conversation with his girl best friend that he just made out with until Bash and Mary came home?
"Well," Anne sighs, "is this even allowed? With your rule? Seasons starting in a few weeks, right?"
"Mhm, mhm, true... Kobe!" Gilbert three-pointers his empty cup into the recycling bin on the other side of the shop. When he gets it in, his eyebrows shoot up and he turns to Anne with a huge grin to see his reflection mirrored on her face.
"Hey!" She laughs, looking around to see if the server saw. An attempt of her own follows, the cup clattering on the floor, and Gilbert sniggering into his fist.
The server saw that one.
Anne quickly deposits the cup correctly and slides back into her seat, templing her fingers business-style. "Anyway."
Gilbert chuckles, shaking his head fondly.
"Back to the question: is there any way we can even do this without you looking like a total hypocrite?"
Gilbert takes a long moment to pause and think, his eyebrows cycling through options and making Anne stifle her smile so as not to distract him from finding a solution.
"No," he answers succinctly.
Anne purses her lips, eyebrows raised at the rather crappy solution he has arrived at. "Soooo, we're doomed?"
Gilbert nods here. "That is correct." His eyes light up. "Or, we could just not tell anyone because technically nothing is going to change except stuff that no one’s going to see anyway."
Anne's face freezes. "So what you’re saying is..." The corner of her mouth slides up into a pleased smirk. "...I have a secret boyfriend who's captain of the ice hockey team and we make out in private."
A queer flip in his chest. A similar smirk on his lips. A coy one-sided shrug. "At least until everyone finds out."
"What do we do then?"
Gilbert shrugs a confused frown. "Make out in public too?"
Anne answers him with a sharp kick under the chrome table. "That’s not what I meant!" She laughs. "What do we do about the team?"
"Ow," Gilbert says, gently lifting his leg to rest his ankle on his other knee, checking for bruises. Anne rolls her eyes. "Nothing, Anne-girl," Gilbert answers, looking up at her to explain. "Look, Jerry’s the only likely person to know, and if I let him date Diana he won’t dare say a thing to any of the others. And it’s not the end of the world if it gets out… maybe some people won’t like it if I’m breaking the rules for my own benefit, but no one’s going to say anything about it. At least not seriously."
Anne shakes her head at him, but can't help but allow a smile. "You’re so corrupt," she whispers.
Gilbert grins, scrunching his nose as he leans forward. "You make me corrupt," he whispers back, kissing Anne chastely on the mouth.
This was going to be difficult.
Like a cat in sunshine, Anne bathes in the glow of the casual affection before standing up. "C'mon. Matthew's making cottage pie tonight. Besides - you shouldn't kiss me in public if we're gonna go through with this."
This was going to be risky.
Gilbert chuckles at the mention of the meal, waving the caution aside. "Remember when you and the girls made me cottage pie and you said-"
Anne shoves a palm in front of Gilbert's face as she walks out the door. "I don't want to talk about it, Blythe."
Laughing, he takes the palm, and kisses it, holding it captive in his hand as they stroll down Lover's Lane towards home.
This... was going to be fun.