Chapter Text
Gilbert unlocked the door to his apartment, walked inside, heard that Anne was already home and sighed in disappointment. He had really been counting on having some time alone to figure out how to broach the topic but, apparently, luck wasn’t on his side that day. He wasn’t surprised though. Luck had never been a player in his relationship, or lack thereof, with Anne.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Any of it. Getting her to agree to the idea was only the initial hurdle he needed to clear. There was also the fact that it was going to be so awkward for him considering their history, not that she even remembered the worst part of it, but the last time he brought up dating her it hadn’t gone well. And then selling it to everyone else? Anne was a good person, really, and so gifted in so many ways. Acting was not one of those ways. She wasn’t even a very good liar from what he’d seen. And the entire weekend was going to be spent lying. Honestly, he didn’t see how it was going to work, but he didn’t really see a way out of it.
He went to change out of his scrubs and told himself to just approach the topic logically. It’s not like he wanted to do this either. He had been looking forward to spending the weekend with Sebastian, Cole and Moody. Pretending to be in a relationship with Anne hadn’t been in the cards.
He went to the kitchen, got a beer, cracked it open and drank half of it before he even looked at her.
“Rough day?” she asked, seemingly uninterested in his response.
He decided to dive right in, ignored her question and said, “I need a date.”
“A date?”
“A date.”
“A date…”
“What am I speaking? Welsh?! Yes! I need a date! You do remember the concept, don’t you?”
Anne closed her marker as calmly as possible, put it in the journal she was grading, shut it and then glared at him. “What I remember is walking in on your girlfriend sitting on my boyfriend’s face.” She added a cheesy smile that indicated she wasn’t quite over it yet.
“Ex-girlfriend. Are you still hung up on him?”
“No,” she said quickly, and she wasn’t. If anything she was happy to have such an obvious reason to break up with him, but that wasn’t the point. “I don’t get hung up on guys who cheat on me. I do get a bit hung up on roommates who bring homewreckers into my apartment though.”
“Our apartment,” he corrected her. “And at least it happened early in the relationship.”
She agreed, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. “You didn’t even seem that upset about it. Didn’t you care?”
He shrugged. “I cared, but not in the way that you’d think. Like I said, we were done by the time that happened.”
“Yeah, a single day! She left here screaming at you the night before.”
“I, um,” he stuttered, suddenly very uncomfortable. “I didn’t realize you heard us.”
“I was sleeping, but I think I woke up when she called you a depraved bastard. And I’m sorry, but what the hell did you ask her to do that made her call you that?”
He laughed in relief and asked, “What? You think it was some weird sex thing?”
“That’s what the context implies, absolutely.”
He shook his head, took another drink and said, “It wasn’t a sex thing, Anne. Something slipped out-”
“Aw, poor thing,” she interrupted and then pouted at him.
“Of my mouth,” he corrected her. “I said something that I shouldn’t have.”
“What was it?”
“I am definitely not telling you that.”
“But it was a legitimately bad thing? She wasn’t overreacting?”
He shook his head and said, “No. She wasn’t. Not even a little. I actually judge her a little bit for wanting to finish after that. Regardless, I need a date.”
“You repeating the words over and over is failing to provide me with the explanation I need to figure out why you’re telling me this.”
He took a deep breath and simply stated, “I would like you to be my date.”
She laughed wildly. “Are you insane? Absolutely not.”
“Come on. What are friends for?”
“Not this.”
“It’s going to be fun,” he tried tempting her. “I’ll show you a real good time…”
“Like you showed Christine?”
He smirked and said, “To be fair, she still got off, so her day could’ve been much worse.”
“You’re awful.”
“I’m not. Seriously though, we’ll have fun. Promise.”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s right. You hate fun.”
“I don’t hate fun,” she argued weakly.
“Perfect, then this won’t be an issue. You won’t even need to do anything extra for it. It’s for the Lynde’s 50th Anniversary party, you were already planning on going.”
“Oh, hell no.”
She glared intently at him but he was unaffected.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no point to it. We can just go and hang out like we usually do. Pretending to be your date would be idiotic. There’s no reason to do so and no one would ever believe it.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I am not wrong.”
“You are so wrong. On both points.”
“How is that possible? What reason could you have for us to do this and who the hell would ever believe it?”
He tried again, figuring he probably should have started with this information earlier. “Anne. I ran into Rachel today. She asked who I was bringing to the party. I mentioned we would both be there and I don’t know what happened, but it was assumed by her that we are dating. Then she started crying and said something like, ‘It’s finally happening!’ and ‘This is the best gift you could have possibly gotten me!’”
“And in typical Gilberty fashion, you just stood there, smiling and nodding, too afraid to correct her and risk anyone in this world being disappointed in you.”
He shrugged and responded, “You know how I do.”
“I just want you to know that I was unable to roll my eyes significantly enough for this situation and that’s why I just looked around the room.”
“That’s what that was? I thought you were stretching your neck.”
“No. I’m trying not to kill you.”
“Anne, I’m not afraid of you anymore.” That was mostly true. “Stop acting like your threats carry any weight. And I don’t see what the big deal is. You already admitted we’d be hanging out the whole night anyway, why not let Rachel enjoy it? What harm could it do?”
“That, there, is a question just begging for disaster. Right along with ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ and ‘What could possibly go wrong?’”
“Except that this isn’t a movie. It’s real life. Everything is going to be fine. We’ll go, we’ll party, we’ll come back and continue on with our lives, someday Rachel will get word that it didn’t work out between us, blah, blah, blah, whatever. It doesn’t matter; we only see her, like, twice a year anyway.”
“But she talks to Marilla all the time.”
“Then Marilla can deal with it. She’ll keep Rachel in her place.”
Anne took a deep breath and thought about it. Pretending to be Gilbert’s girlfriend was going to be difficult. It’s not that she hadn’t gotten over her high school crush, it’s that she never even let herself think about it long enough to start processing what happened between them. She feared that pretending to be his girlfriend would bring it all back and she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
When she ignored their history, she was able to acknowledge the fact that they were pretty good friends. Great friends, really; she was closer to Gilbert now than nearly anyone, which was very strange for her to admit, but it was true. She knew she could trust him and he was probably right; maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. It was the Lynde’s party anyway and she doubted anyone would be paying any attention to her and Gilbert. She looked at him and internally swore. There were a million reasons that this was a bad idea but they were unimportant because, in the end, it came down to one thing: she didn’t want to deal with Rachel.
She looked at him, tried to convince herself it would be fine, and asked “Just one evening?”
“Um, well, it’s Rachel. So everyone in Avonlea probably already thinks we’re dating and the bicentennial is this weekend too so it’s probably going to be more like a Friday through Sunday thing,” he said as nonchalantly as possible.
She exploded, “I’m supposed to pretend to be your girlfriend for three days in front of the whole damn town?!”
“Yeah. Problem?”
“Yes! Why don’t you think it’s a problem? Gilbert, this is so, so dumb.”
“Why are you so upset about it? Am I that appalling to you?”
“No! Of course not! It’s just…”
“It’s just what?” he challenged her. If anyone should be uncomfortable with the situation, it would be him. He was trying to convince himself more than her that it would all be fine; he didn’t understand why it was such a big deal for her.
She stumbled over her words for a few seconds but eventually explained, “It’s just not a believable situation. Okay?” Anne’s phone buzzed, she looked at the message and read aloud, “‘Are you and Gilbert really together? Finally?’ What the hell does she mean ‘finally’?”
Gilbert shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Who’s it from?”
“Marilla. And then she says, ‘Our house is full of Lyndes this weekend. We were going to put you on the sofa, but that won’t work if Gilbert is here too.’ What do you have to say about that?”
“I’d agree with her. We won’t fit on that couch. And I’d like to point out that apparently Marilla has no trouble believing it at all.”
“So now we have to sleep together too? Why?!”
“Just adjacent to each other, obviously we won’t need to have sex.”
She scoffed dramatically and said, “Oh! Thank you! So good to know that there is a limit to this absurdity!”
He smirked at her and quietly said, “You’re welcome.”
She tried not to laugh; he was just too cute when he was proud of himself. She looked away from him and then asked, “Can’t we just stay at our own houses?”
“Not convincingly, no. Especially since people know that we live together. But I have a solution for that.”
She sighed, shook her head and muttered under her breath, “Of course you do.”
“Cole manages the inn, remember?”
“The inn owned by Rachel and Thomas.”
“One and the same. He heard the news-”
“Shocking!” she interrupted sarcastically.
“And he miraculously had a room available for us this weekend.”
“Miraculously my ass. Whose room was it supposed to be?”
“You know, that’s really not important,” he said, futilely hoping she would let it go.
“Whose room was it going to be, Gilbert?” she asked sternly.
“Thomas and Rachel’s,” he caved. “Apparently they were all too eager to give up their room for us.”
“You call that woman right now and set things straight. We aren’t going to steal their room on their anniversary as part of a lie. This is so not cool.”
“No one ever said this was cool. It just needs to be done.”
“Why?! Why can’t you just tell her that we are not dating and that we will see her this weekend as two individuals like we originally planned?”
“She was just so, so happy Anne. And she is so stressed out about the event that I didn’t want to disappoint her. Plus, I just got off the phone with Cole before I got home. He said Thomas was relieved to not have to deal with staying in the inn. He hates the hassle and prefers his own bed. Come on, Anne. Do it for Thomas.”
“That’s a little rude, you know I have a soft spot for him.”
“I do, so I’m going to use it. And Cole said we have the best room in the place and that you’re going to love it.”
“Yeah, last time I listened to Cole, he was moving out of here and you were moving in.”
“And aren’t I just a delight?” he smirked.
She tried to ignore the flutter in her chest and said, “You are not. You don’t know how to lose an argument, you don’t know how to water plants and you never sweep or vacuum.”
“You don’t know how to lose an argument, they’re your plants and you hate cleaning the toilet. It’s called teamwork. And it’s been working pretty well for the last two years.”
Her mood mellowed a bit. “Shit. Has it been that long?”
He thought about it for a minute, then asked, “Three years?”
“Thirty-three months,” she calculated.
“Whatever. It works. What were we arguing about?”
“Your idiotic commitment to being my fake boyfriend.”
“Right. We’re good to go then?” he asked and then turned to leave.
“We are definitely not good to go!” she yelled as he walked out of the room. “We need a plan!”
He popped his head around the corner, smiled and said, “So glad to have you on board. We’ll work out the details later. We have all week.”
“Four days. We have four days to figure out how to be a couple.”
“How hard can it be?”
“Extremely hard! Have you ever had to kiss someone you’re not into?” she nervously asked. She had. She had been doing it for years, trying to make herself fall for any guy who wasn’t him.
“Who said we would have to kiss?” he asked, surprised that she would even acknowledge the possibility.
“Societal norms? Common sense? You really think Rachel isn’t going to demand some physical affection between us?”
“I didn’t consider that,” he admitted.
“Of course you didn’t. Because you suck.”
“I don’t suck. I’m just trying to make an old lady happy. What is so wrong with that?”
“Um, the lying, for one. The stealing their hotel room-”
“Doing Thomas a favor.”
“Gilbert,” she sighed. “This is a really bad idea.”
“Why?” he asked soberly, trying to figure out what her real problem with the situation was. “Besides the fact that you can’t act for shit, what are you so afraid of?”
She took a deep breath and swallowed hard. She hated lying to him but the thought of answering him honestly frightened her more.
“Nothing. You’re right; it’ll be fine,” she smiled at him as she clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palm.
He was silent. He couldn’t believe that she agreed so easily. All he could do was nod and then he left her there and went back to his room, dreading the weekend more than she would ever realize.